Gardening with the Fairies, Part III

What is a faery, anyway? Frankly, I don’t know.

When I started this blog entry, I was still operating on the vague notions I’ve had all along about these Intelligences that seem to be operating in our gardens, wherever we live. But when I went to look up the various spellings and designations for the beings we’re calling fairies, I ran into a lot of dogma and ancient beliefs and tales and legends. And I also decided, like so many other contemporary writers, that somehow faery or faerie looks and feels more poetically appropriate and suitable than fairy. Maybe too many modern so-called “fairytales” have tainted that spelling with something other than what I mean here.

But what is that exactly? Lianne, just what DO you mean by garden faery (or fairy)?

Also, when I sent the first draft of Part I to Laird William for his permission to speak of his work with Fairy Realms Reiki, I was suddenly self-conscious about my ignorance on this faerie subject, let alone confused about spelling. How could I be writing so fast and furious about something I actually, truly know nothing about?

I do know that what I’ve been envisioning in the garden really isn’t like any of the explanations or definitions or traditions I read about on Wikipedia. It’s close to the deva concept, but not really. That would mislead you. Sigh.

So now that you've read Part I, and Part II about the lessons we've learned from the fairies, I will embark on a CoAuthored venture to enlighten both you and me. I shall ask my Cosmic CoAuthors just what it is that Joseph and I are experiencing in the garden.

Gardening with the Fairies, Part II

This was cropped out of an untouched (I swear!) image

Joseph took in our back yard:

Here's the original, which I found just this morning while selecting images for this blog post!

A trick of the light? Or ... a real garden fairy caught playing in the sunbeams?

The photo was taken in our back yard in December, 2010, nine months after we moved into this rental house in the Tierrasanta area of San Diego. But we never noticed the fairy image before today! It was just another shot of sunlight and fallen leaves and rocks in our collection ... until now, when I've come to write the follow-up to Part I of "Gardening with the Fairies." (If you haven't read Part I yet, follow that link.)

Okay, if that doesn't convince you that the fairies have followed us to California, how about the story of this little one. I first spotted it, this lonely little sunflower, forcing its way up into the patio from between the loosely laid pavement and the ill-fitting boards the landlord installed, evidence of the birdseed we'd tried putting out last summer (until it attracted a rat in the fall, the most undesirable sort of fairy, a story I'll get to in a moment.)

Gardening with the Fairies, Part I

Do you believe in fairies?

A few years ago when we lived in Michigan, we rented a house several streets from the shores of Lake Michigan. The back yard was nothing more than weeds shaved down to stubs in an effort to mimic a lawn. The landlady even apologized for it. But we loved the house.

So when a friend of ours announced that he was gaining his Fairy Realms Reiki attunement, we immediately asked him to practice on our back yard.