AMERICAN FUNERAL FLOWERS

Living in the Heart: How to Enter into the Sacred Space Within the Heart

All over the planet Drunvalo Melchizedek is known and immensely loved as a great spiritual teacher. Through workshops and books he brought his vision of the Flower of Life and the Mer-Ka-Ba to the world. Now, based on his latest series of workshops, he shares his experiences of living in the sacred space within the heart, and he explains the processes and techniques he uses to enter this space. Join him and be part of the large group of people who have found the joy of living in the space where you and God are one.
"Long ago we humans used a form of communication and sensing that did not involve the brain in any way; rather, it came from a sacred place within our heart.
What good would it do to find this place again in a world where the greatest religion is science and the logic of the mind? Don’t I know this world where emotions and feelings are second-class citizens? Yes, I do.
But my teachers have asked me to remind you who you really are. You are more than a human being, much more. For within your heart is a place, a sacred place where the world can literally be remade through conscious cocreation. If you give me permission, I will show what has been shown to me." – Drunvalo Melchizedek

On May 12, 1997 community members gathered to dedicate the Katharine Hepburn Garden in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. The naming pays tribute to her lifelong love of flowers and gardening and thanks Ms. Hepburn for her commitment to the park and the neighborhood. A wide variety of species were used in the border planting. The plant list included birch, dawn redwood, and dogwood trees; mountain laurel, witch hazel, viburnum, rhododendron, hydrangea, and abelia; as well as numerous perennials, groundcovers, and ferns.

Katharine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907, in Hartford, Connecticut. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1928 and in the same year she made her professional debut in a minor role in a Baltimore stock company production of Czarina. By 1932 she was a star on Broadway in The Warriors Husband, followed in the same year by her screen debut opposite John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement. On Broadway Ms. Hepburn originated the Tracy Lord role in The Philadelphia Story (1939) before taking it to Hollywood a year later. In 1942 she starred opposite Spencer Tracy in Woman of the Year and began a twenty-five year relationship which included working on nine classic films.

Ms. Hepburn has won numerous honors for her acting. She was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won four Oscars for best actress. In 1962 Ms. Hepburn won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Long Days Journey Into Night. In the 1970s she worked in television, where she and co-star Laurence Olivier earned Emmys for Love Among the Ruins. Her two memoirs, Me and The Making of the African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind, were best sellers. Ms. Hepburn has always gone her own way, wearing slacks, refusing interviews, shunning autograph seekers, keeping her private life private, and all the while speaking her mind.

Her passion for flowers and gardening began during her childhood in West Hartford. On Sunday afternoons the Hepburn family went for drives and walks in the hills west of the Connecticut River. The children competed to see who could spot the first Lily of the Valley, Bloodroot, Columbine, or Pink Ladys Slipper. When Ms. Hepburn moved to Turtle Bay with her husband Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1932, she transplanted wildflowers from her parents home to her backyard garden. She joined the Turtle Bay Association in 1957, and for more than thirty years she fought to halt the destruction of trees, to defend the sidewalks from encroaching development, and to protect mid-blocks from high-rise construction.

Cleared and planted in 1983, and transferred to the Parks department and thus permanently protected in 1996, the 17,000 square foot Sixth Street and Avenue B Community Garden in Alphabet City is one of the largest and most elaborate in New York.

Home to over 15 fruiting trees, more than 50 flowering shrubs and inumerable herbs, flowers and vegetables, the Garden is best known for its mostly wooden 37-foot Tower of Found Art, made entirely of scrapped material and adorned with ownerless possessions outlining the structure like baubles on a Christmas Tree. Urban legend has it that the creating artist is a one-legged, white beareded war veteran who to this day climbs to the top to place his found objects.

Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places shows readers how to find and prepare more than five hundred different plants for nutrition and better health, including such common plants as mullein (a tea made from the leaves and flowers suppresses a cough), stinging nettle (steam the leaves and you have a tasty dish rich in iron), cattail (cooked stalks taste similar to corn and are rich in protein), and wild apricots (an infusion made with the leaves is good for stomach aches and disgestive disorders).
More than 260 detailed line drawings help readers identify a wide range of plants -- many of which are suited for cooking by following the more than thirty recipes included in this book. There are literally hundreds of plants readily available underfoot waiting to be harvested and used either as food or as a potential therapeutic. This book is both a field guide to nature's bounty and a source of intriguing information about the plants that surround us.