If Life Throws You Nettles, Make Shampoo.

This is a perfect case of life reflecting back to me the lesson I need to learn.

I have been out in the garden this evening, clearing some weeds. We have a beautiful peony that produces gorgeous red flowers. It happened to arrive there by accident. It was there the first year we moved in and then, last year, it appeared and bore one great big bright red bloom. This year there have been seven.

The peony has grown amongst the rocks at the bottom of the garden, and I had allowed the stinging nettles to overgrow and they blocked the peony from view. This evening, my task was to clear the nettles.

Now you can look down the garden and see this fantastically gorgeous peony. With seven blooms.

So, taking it from life and throwing it into the esoteric, the peony represents us, you know, people. The beauty we have that crops out at the most unusual of locations. One year we discover one bloom, then the next, there are seven. But, we so often hide our true selves behind masks, behind games, behind pain and while those blooms can be glimpsed, we cannot appreciate their full glory. Until someone comes along - or you do this for yourself - to harvest all the nettles and reveal how beautiful you truly are.

(Buddhists call this casting off the transient to reveal the true)

And what of the nettles? Well, today the moon is in Libra, a brilliant day to harvest nettles. When the moon is right for it, my stinging nettles are going to be boiled into a hair rinse to help control itchy flaky scalp.

And that's what we should do. We should take our nettles and use them for the greater good. Hating them won't do very much, but boiling them into a soup to use for scalp problems will!

Use your trials and tribulations to bring you strength and to heal yourself, not to live in anger and hatred. What's more productive? The nettle in the bin or the nettle I have boiled to use in a cleansing tea? You choose.