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.