Moments

The wildflowers are at their peak, a lacy profusion of petals, happy faces, feathery leaves and a finale of dancing butterflies sewing the design of next year's arrangement.

The air is sweet and thick at high noon, with honey-hay breezes anointed by evaporating river mist. The water has taken good care of the plants, and as I wade carefully down the current, I can brush my fingertips along the flowering vervain. I crush a little watermint and inhale it's beatific scent deep into my lungs and belly. The cool ripples float along my calves as I step in between slippery rocks. All around me there is bounty; canopies of grape leaves, frosty thickets of young willows, sassy bull thistle, and half eaten boneset patches. Many creatures have stepped along this mud before me.

Nearby the raccoons forage. They are tiny little new ones, crunching along last year's leaves, digging into the dirt for edible treasures, and waddling from spot to spot. The bitter mugwort and wormwood are nearly ready to make flowers, and so I collect many stalks for potions. My big jar of vinegar sits, luminescent, on the counter top, and the drying stalks hide in the shade. Clever in the corners of the riverbank are the stunning blue singing mouths of Skullcap... soothing my spirit as I listen to their colorful melody.
My basket is full this summer. With water plants and meadow plants, flowers and fragrances.
With beauty.
And exquisite moments of sharing.
A page is turning, and the suspense is heavy. What moments lie ahead? Where do I put my energy - so that it will be multiplied, not stolen? What practices can I cultivate that will nourish my authentic being.

I will ask the plants and pray to the river.

Herbal Roots - a blessing to all plant folk

Greetings!

I have been wanting to do a little promotion for Herbal Roots - and have been having a hell of a time trying to insert a picture/link widget into my wordpress blog for the Wilderness School (I still have my hair but it was getting close)

SO.... I am going to sing some unabashed praise here, and add, as you will see, her sweet little badge/link on my side bar.

Simply put, I LOVE Herbal Roots. Herbalist, Homesteader and loving Mama, Kristine Brown of LunaHerbCo., hand writes and illustrates every sweet little morsel in there.... and they are generous 20+ pages of herbal wisdom, games, lore, projects, and medicinal facts.

I've enjoyed playing in these pages myself, and have also used them for our little ones (the Micro-Scouts) at our Wilderness Homeschool programs, who adore it.

I love the accessible nature of the information ... such a breath of fresh air compared to the dense reading in many herbal books. I love that I can learn it and immediately go and DO it ... it is satisfying and leaves a lasting imprint of each of the plants.

Each plant is picked in a timely manner - at least for much of the eastern/central part of the US, the plant written about won't be far from reach, and ripe for the pickin'

At a superbly affordable price, I assume it a part of my own monthly growing as an herbalist, and I love supporting another Green Mama.

For your own PDF copies.... go here: HERBAL ROOTS ... and don't forget to share on Facebook or any other networks you might belong too.

Thanks!!

My heart in the palm of your land.

In the center of the chaos, stress, and struggles of life, there remains a special place. It's a place that breathes new life into me the moment I set my feet on the ground. This place is a tapestry of forest, meadow, wetlands, and every kind of terrain you might find in New England.

In the mornings, If I get there early enough, the mist curls around the mountains like a morning steam facial; the leaves reaching for the kiss of moisture. The trails are sometimes flooded, and the cherry trees are the biggest I've ever seen. Aside from my own home, it's the land I've watched over the last three years. I've watched the Nettles cover fields, and the poison Ivy grow angry patches along the mowed edges. The Groundhogs have reproduced three generations and are now the animals which greet all the newcomers as they arrive. The landscape has blossomed a million wild roses, and given heaping pots full of ramp stew. It's given deep mentorship to the most extraordinary people I've ever met.

Along the high waterfall, the red efts hide under their log huts, while the solomon's seal flickers in the cool shade of the hemlocks. The birch saplings bear the sweetest leaves for chewing. The wintergreen crawls along the edge of the cliffs like green lace along the mossy shawl. In the forest circle, the dewdrops linger like little fairies on a sleep-in morning. The bobcats leave signs but never show their face. I know the bear are not far.

The edge lining the river rolls into a thorny stand of black locust... so tall it's only a matter of a strong storm before they timber over. The beaver have abandoned this small valley, moving upstream to riper lands. They've dammed the brushy area where the kingfisher lives, along with the snakes, turtles, frogs, and songbirds. The great blue heron makes her way up and down the river way. In the beaver's wake are stands of coppiced willow, cattail, and stately blue vervain. The cottonwoods lay across the water.

It's here - despite the conventional pressures of making business work - of striving to impart this same sense of wonder to children - where my heart opens. Despite my profound hatred of winter and my longing to include dance in my life again - on this land my heart opens. The generosity of the Mugwort and the sound of the tumbling waters and a place where my beloved medicines grow everywhere.... lining the walkway as if welcoming me home, how could I not?

It's the land I know the best out of all the places I've been .... and it never ceases to astonish me. I don't know if I'll ever be able to serve this land, the way it serves me.

Who knows what seeds I'm planting. Who knows where it will take me?

Summer Herbal Intensive

I am offering an Herbal Intensive for adults this Summer. It will be once a week (Wednesdays) for seven weeks, 9am - 3pm. I am very excited and I hope some of you can join me.

It will take place where I work, Great Hollow Wilderness School, in New Fairfield, CT. The land is enchanted and we will get to see plenty of it, since this course will not take place indoors. We will be on the land for the entire time aside from snippets where we may need a kitchen. All other heating will be over a campfire.

We will learn first hand from the plants, and use all our senses to gain information. We will hike through different habitats and examine them. We will learn some simple botany, plant families, and practical herbal wisdom. We will teach each other, get wet in the river, harvest and prepare medicinal and edible plants growing in abundance. We will cover a lot of material, yet it will be simple, digestible and applicable in everyday life. Indexing, journaling, and homework will be implemented. We will also be exploring herbal energetics, vocabulary for the herbalist, and probably a few unknown surprises too. :)

Herbal Intensive for beginners, ages 18 + 

Wednesdays June 24 - August 5, 9 am - 3 pm

Fee $ 450, deposit required

For registration go here

To learn more about Great Hollow Homeschool go here

To learn about all of Great Hollow go here

Green Blessings!

Everything is lush

I've never seen pink pine cones until today. 

I ate it. 

Wild (mystery) Cherry elixir

Today the Jr. Naturalists and I made a wild cherry elixir. The smell of the house was outrageous.... the sweet cherry-almond fragrance was, as one student put it: "intoxicating"!

It was a sweet day. We headed outside to the path where the edge of the trail is laced with an old rock wall and a border of trees; maple, shag bark hickory, and towering black cherries. Behind that, on the edge of the gentle knotweed hill, the smaller cherry trees were in full blossom. We harvested fresh flowering twigs for an elixir. The misty air was filled with the aroma of the polleny flowers.

It was magical.

We used the inner bark of the black cherry, and the twigs and flowers of the smaller, mystery cherry. I cannot seem to figure out what species it is.

None the less, we made a wonderful elixir. We (very) gently decocted the bark (both spp) and infused the flowers of the mystery cherry tree. We composted the leaves, as my reading has explained the leaves to be potentially sickening due to the cyanide content.

Then we mixed it:

1/2 cup flower infusion

1/2 cup bark infusion

1 cup honey

1 cup brandy

I will be making more on my own - independent of a class setting - and it will be stronger since I won't have to fit it into one and a half hours - I will be infusing the flowers and bark into the premixed blend of one part each brandy, water, and honey. That way there will be no dilution.

My black cherry tincture (twigs, fruit, and some leaves) from last year has been a saving grace this week for my deep cough. Small doses of it immediately calm and soothe the spasms and that horrible itchy pain.

the flowers are in clusters (corymbs) of two to five, approximately, with a long stem to each flower, typical of cultivated cherries. Each flower displays the classic Rosaceae pattern: 5 petals, numerous stamens and pistils. The leaves are toothed and the tips are pointed, but not elongated. They do not appear to be shiny and waxy like choke cherry or black cherry leaves usually are. They lack the little glands on the petiole - otherwise I might brand it as a wild cherry: Prunus avium. I will be keeping watch for changes, however.



The newer bark is the quintessential cherry bark: pronounced lenticels, and smooth with a gorgeous bordeaux color.


The growing habit is that of a smaller tree-shrub. one to three main trunks, out branching into a few more secondary, elegantly wavy small trunks, then into branches and twigs.
Broken, fallen branches like to continue flowering and growing if they have a chance at surviving. The beaver bog is nearby and much of this ground is nicely hydrated. The West facing trees are in full blossom. The true black cherries are not flowering yet, although the premature racemes are formed, as you can see in the below picture, the only picture in this post that is of true Black Cherry.
The mature bark (on the main trunk) is furrowed and cracked, typical of black cherry, but unlike black cherry (and more like river birch) it was severely curling and peeling on the main trunk. The second eldest branches displayed relatively normal bark behavior, and the newest twigs were your classic pin cherry style; as in the twig photo above.

The bark, although lovely, did not have nearly the fragrance as the black cherry bark. My trusty co-instructor was generous enough to run out and harvest an additional swath of true black cherry for our elixir. So, I do not know ultimately if my mystery cherry carries the same medicinal prowess as the true. The flowers seem to exemplify the same exquisite fragrance and are a very tasty edible treat whilst harvesting.

We prepared the flowers as a gentle infusion. We prepared the bark in a gentle decoction, so it was reduced by about 1/3. The fragrance was intense and romantic.

And we all went home with a little jar of homemade medicine.

Pretty little pics on the last night of April