It’s been a strange summer in Seattle, in fact, two stranger summers in a row. Cooler than normal, and damp when it’s usually dry.

But all’s well because the lavender is here!

I use lavender for my business. I keep huge bunches of the grosso variety everywhere, clumped in vases, draped over towel racks, and enjoy it all year.I keep bunches of the giant Hidcote variety, modernist yet exuberant, in my bright, busy office. Lavender is everywhere here, because it’s our home and our office.

I teach out of my house. My home is a carefully balanced place where many beings visit, many who aren’t human, as my intuitive practice involves talking with all life. My home is a peaceful, energizing space where students come to study storytelling and learn how to intuitively communicate with all life, where  clients come to meet and work with me and my crystal partner, Fallon, the citrine Lemurian quartz sphere.

True confession: it’s sometimes difficult for me to do business. I have particular views about how the world should be run, and how we should live in it. I don’t always live up to my ideals, but I believe in tolerance and grace, respect and compassion, humor and good judgment.

That’s why my lavender is important. It is beautiful, it is one of the few plants Grace the Cat won’t eat, it smells great, and it’s a wonderful, vibrationally clearing plant.

I use lavender to make a clearing, cleansing product I make: Fallon Lavender Salt. It’s a combination of coarse ground Himalayan sea salt from Solay Wellness and lavender, in proportions that both look and feel good, which is then infused by my crystal partner, Fallon. It is a unique product, and it makes me laugh, because I never thought I was a crafts person, but then I never thought I’d be an MBA with a crystal ball, either.

But the product itself works first because I only buy the elements of it from people I trust and respect. Salt from Solay Wellness, where I’ve also purchased salt lamps and salt products for over four years. Lavender from Cedarbrook Lavender and Herb Farm in Sequim, Washington.

For two years now I’ve happily called Marcella Stachurski at Cedarbrook. I receive prompt, courteous service, advice on handling the lavender, and neighborly interest in exactly what I did with that much lavender. This year was a strange one: the lavender was a month late, even for the reputedly dry climate in Sequim.

I am impressed with businesses that make an extra effort, particularly in a time when even basic courtesies are missing from our dialogue and behavior. It makes a difference to me that the owner of Cedarbrook was particularly concerned to find the longest-stemmed lavender for me, in a year when it just wasn’t warm enough for the lavender to grow as tall as it usually does. How she decided not to send a variety I was interested in because it didn’t meet “her standards,” and generously gave me extras to make sure I had enough.

I will appreciate their good business for the next year, and so will my family and my clients. Every time I look at the lavender I’ll smile and think that a simple brief business connection yielded a few minutes of warm conversation and an order created just for me, and for my business.

It’s not hard to do good while doing business. I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often, but for now I’m grateful my lavender is here. We’ll sleep well for the next few weeks as it dries. We’ll smile at our house. We’ll do good business in the coming year, because good people have done good business with us.

Isn’t that the way it should be?

(c) 2011 Robyn M Fritz