Shared air

I found this post waiting patiently in my draft file; it was written before "shared air" became something that we're all being taught to avoid .. these are strange days indeed.

But in looking it over I think it may be even more relevant now than when I wrote it.

Chakra work, er no, make that chakra play!

For anyone interested in Chakra work, I've just tripped over an excellent page to explore, it's here.

Really nice illustrations.

There's a forum connected to the site as well. You really can learn the most amazing things in forums tucked away in quiet corners of the internet!

Turns out, there's a chakra I've never heard about before, positioned between the heart chakra and the throat chakra. And my goodness, it seems to be the most important one of all! (she says with tongue in cheek)

Ease and flow, pandiculation and meditation

'Tis the winter of the nap, as far as we're concerned.

And why not? There is nothing sweeter than snuggling down for a snooze whenever we might just feel like it.

We're up before the sun most mornings anyway, in time to catch moments when the little orchard that we've created in our back yard looks like this:

Just before dawn.

Yep.

Life is easy. Life just flows.

You know that moment when you wake up well rested and relaxed and you yawn and have a really delicious stretch and then just lie there for a bit?

The Sunshine Gang

There are plant allies for those of us trying to hone the skill of sustainable happiness.

I like flower essences for this, because their actions are subtle and gentle. I think the flower essences are closer to the vibration of the heart than anything else I know. I particularly like how they can be used so specifically, to light up the dark places inside us.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and what could be sunnier than a flower?

That middle layer of ick

I sleep really well at night, and I have great dreams. Dreaming is something of a sport to me, I can have a lot of fun there. My waking moments are fun, too. My life is joyful and satisfying.

But sometimes I'll be cozy in my lovely bed, drifting off happily into la-la land, and suddenly some scene of tragedy is playing out before me. A refugee camp. Or an accident scene. Occasionally, when waking up from a perfectly nice sleep, I'll find myself in the midst of swirling thoughts. Worries about loved ones or even just acquaintances from the web.

Has this happened to you?

What the hell is that, anyway?

Faffing about with lanolin and ending up with a "cleansing cream"

This project was a fiddly business!

And the resulting "cream" does not have the light and silky feel of something like Nivea would make, that's for sure. It's actually quite heavy and at first I was pretty crestfallen about that. But stay with me here, because in the end it turns out to be doing wonders for my (ahem) mature skin.

This version is adapted from Sarah Garland's "The Complete Book of Herbs & Spices". I say "adapted" because, well, at first I was winging it, then I realized I was, in fact, fucking it up, then I referred to the book. And I wasn't even trying to make a damn cleansing cream, I was trying to make a moisturizing balm for my feet .. but then .. well, I'll start from the beginning, okay?

Help is on the way

Our bodies respond to our emotions, so (I figure) probably the most important thing we can do for our health is to cultivate a conscious sense of well being. After all, the body will do its best to maintain health; well being is its natural state. Best not to undermine that with a conflicting state of mind.

That bears repeating, perhaps?

Well being is the body's natural state.

Some seeds

Most of the seed planting I do takes place at this time of year, the fall. And sometimes in the winter, too. It's really a delightful way to go about expanding one's stock of flowers and medicinal plants; calendula, mullein, evening primrose and pansies do particularly well this way, and no doubt there are others. Echinacea, too.

I wander through the garden foraging for seedheads that have matured on the plants and scatter the seeds on the surface of the soil where I want them to come up next spring. No particular care is taken, just a whole lot of fun is had.

Betony for tinnitus

(Please note - Here I am referring to Wood Betony - Stachys officinalis, formerly known as Betonica officinalis, a plant that comes to us from Europe. It is not the same plant as Pedicularis canadensis, also known as American Wood Betony. If you are looking at commercial sources, it is essential to ensure you know which you are getting, as they do not have the same uses.)

Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of the Doctrine of Signatures (see top bar), and also that I do crazy things like let plants instruct me on how to prepare and use them .. so the following is an example of how those sorts of things play out in my world.

I'd been drinking betony leaf tea off and on throughout the summer, "keying it out" over a period of some weeks. ("Keying it out" is herbalist-speak for getting to know a plant's personality.) I made a very mild brew, just 2 or 3 leaves fresh from the garden to about a litre of freshly boiled water, steeped for about 10-15 minutes. I added a couple of tablespoons of that tea to each glass of water I drank throughout the day, so each batch lasted me a few days. See? Not very much betony in my system at any one time, but enough, and for long enough, that I could get a sense of what its more subtle effects might be.

I dunno if that's what other herbalists and plant folk do, it's just the way I like to do things.

What the Raven says

wooOOP!

wooOOP!

Just exactly how does a Raven make those w or p sounds without lips?

Wild plums (and other fruit), slugs, appreciation and the heart's desire

I really like the word appreciation.

It's got this neat built-in deeper meaning to it that just tickles me pink. For not only does appreciating something mean understanding its value, the dictionary also tells us that "appreciate", used as a verb, means to grow.

So in a way, when we appreciate something it grows in value.

I find that there's a difference in .. er .. tone between when I am feeling grateful and when I am appreciating. They're both positive, of course. But grateful implies (to me) a sort of selfishness .. not the right word, I'll try again .. grateful implies that this thing or event benefits me. Appreciation opens me up to see the value in that thing or event in the larger sense.

Once more, with feeling

In this world where information has become currency, words seem to have come to matter more than the meaning behind them.

It's because we miss that meaning that we just keep looking for more words.

We're obsessed with collecting information, horde it in files

                      like pirates with chests of gold doubloons 

only to bring it out and look at it now and then, memorizing terms and phrases we think are important - we call that learning? - never realizing that information, without meaning, is like food without nourishment.

How I spent my summer (and a flower essence story)

Off the internet, that's how I spent it!

And wow .. I highly recommend it. But more on that later.

First, a nifty, and just a little spooky, story about a flower ...

Gardens have their own plans

There are sunchokes coming up in my monarda patch.

The monarda patch itself is obligingly moving eastward to give the sunchokes the space they seem to think they're owed.

The motherwort plants - 2 of them are gigantic already - have produced litters of babies amongst the sedums.

Yellow dock? Don't talk to me about yellow dock. It's in the lawn. It's also in the monarda patch. It's .. well, it's everywhere you'd expect to see a dandelion, and if you think it's tough to get a dandelion out of the ground you oughta try yellow dock. The leaves slide off if you try to just yank it, exuding this slippery mucilaginous stuff (good medicine, no doubt) that makes a second attempt laughable. Only a big digging fork going down a foot or more (at least) and getting to the root is going to even half way discourage those buggers.

But on the other hand ..

2 large plastic bins, 1 plunger, an assortment of basins and one big laugh

I didn't get where I am today without learning to be resourceful in the face of challenge!

Here's the story - thanks to the ongoing Great Flood of 2019, and 1/3 of our village being under waist-high water (and looking to stay that way for a few more weeks), our wastewater treatment plant is rather taxed at the moment and on April 29th we were asked to limit what goes down our drains.

Okay then. It certainly seems a reasonable thing to do under the (apocalyptic) circumstances.

Shit hits fan - the rant.

This is the Cheneaux Dam, on the Ottawa river, just downstream from us. Believe it or not, there is only one gate open, the one in the background, at the far end of the bridge. This is not a normal spring.

Up and down the Ottawa river - and all its tributaries - the twice as much as normal snowfall of the past winter is swelling rivers to unprecedented levels. Two years ago, we had a "100 year" flood. This is much, much worse.

Using fresh stinging nettles in the kitchen .. and elsewhere

Allow me, please, to open with a small rant -

You'd think I would be pleased to hear that stinging nettles are now commercially available at farmers' markets and even some 'foodie' outlets and yeah, it is 'great', in a way.

But deep down, I'm kinda saddened to hear it.

Here's why: The true nourishment of nettles, their Medicine, their meaning in the grander scheme of things, is to be found in the gathering. 

It's in the hunt.

It's in the way the heartbeat quickens just a little when we discern just the right shade of green (with a blush of red or purple when they're really young) nestled amongst the golds and browns of the old grasses of last year. It's in the pink cheeks from the biting wind and spitting rain of a spring day, and the squelch of the still wet ground we likely have to cross to get to where nettles are wont to be the most plentiful. The best nettles, in my neck of the woods at least, always seem to be the least accessible ones.

It's in the first stings that bring cold benumbed fingers back to fiery life.

It's in their wildness, their downright orneriness. That orneriness is matched by our own as we're so willing, eager even, to set comfort aside just for a taste of something so genuinely fresh after a winter of imported food.

That's nettles.

But nettles aren't (alas) that for everyone, for some they're just a novel - and very, very nutritious -vegetable that can be a little daunting to deal with in the kitchen. It's not yet nettle season where I live - it's a good month away yet - but I've already heard from folks in warmer climes that they've got themselves a bag or two from the market and they don't quite know how to deal with them. Can I help? Sure, I'll be glad to.

Now that my little rant is (mostly, but I'm not guaranteeing completely) out of the way, read on for how I've learned to prep and cook nettles.

Hands on, how to - alder infused oil; the good, the bad and the ugly

Dammit!!
click to embiggen

We'll start with the bad and the ugly, since that's where the story begins.

I went to refill my trusty little bottle of alder oil and discovered this ----------------------------------->>>>>

My backup jar of alder oil was moldy, throughout!

See now, this is the kind of lesson one learns over and over and over when one is lazy or forgetful. You can leave herbs (almost) indefinitely in vodka, but not in oil. No sir. Normally I would have strained this - heaven knows why I didn't - and I would have put some coarse salt in the bottom of the jar of strained oil, too. Salt pulls any excess water to itself and keeps the oil from going off. Like that. Yuck.

Bad girl, wildcucumber, bad, bad!!