whats growing in the garden....medicine?

My wee seedlings that have been still for so long have grown in the last four days! Spring is beginning to seep into the days. As I watered my gardens a term came into my mind 'physick garden'. So in my developing researching before doubting mode, i found that these were gardens in Europe created by apothecaries to teach their apprentices plant identification and give them a connection to the plants. Learning gardens.Theres a garden like this that was established in Chelsea in 1673 thats still growing! How cool is that. Mind you indigenous folks earth gardens have been going way longer. But when these gardens were all the rage hospitals had them, damn sensible, as did private estates, damn sensible. Heres to physic gardens in every home and place of healing!

While Im on this era, about 50 years prior actually, Ill quote from Nicholas Culpeper.He was the first apothecary to translate the pharmacoepia (list of herbs in use) from the Latin into english so your everyday folk could access the information. Along the way came some scathing words for the medical establishment.
"It seems the College hold  a strange opinion that it would do an English man mischief to know what the herbs in his garden are good for."
At the time the Colleges descriptions of English herbs listed neither their common names or virtues.
"I would consider what number of poor creatures perish daily who else might happily be preserved if they knew what the Herbs in their own Gardens were good for." He was an eat your weeds kinda bloke, whereas the establishment of the time liked to use complex mixtures of exotic and expensive ingredients...

Nicholas is also known for his combining of astrology with herbs. He ascribed symptoms, body parts and herbs to astrological houses and then used either herbs from an opposite house, or sympatheticly ones from the same house to treat disease.
"He that would know the reason of the operation of the Herbs, must look up as high as the stars."
 Love how he capitalises Herbs...he was trying to construct a system of understanding health that could be accessible to many rather than the few. His English Physician containinng "a Compleat Method of Practice of Physic, whereby a Man may preserve his Body in Health, or cure himself when sick, with such things one-ly as grown in England, they being most fit for english Bodies." Local plants, used one at a time as simples.

Resources:
Planetary planting: A Guide to Organic Growing by the Signs of the Zodiac by Louise Riotte
Green Pharmacy : The History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine by Barbara Grigg

chixweed portrait...

Ive been watching a patch of chickweed growing out front of our place with glee. Wanted to draw her with flowers and seedheads, so when she bloomed I eagerly picked a wee bunch to do her portrait.

Incensed....

Picture a flaming hearthfire, on top a pot bubbles away with a  soup, or stew, or stir fry flavoured with herbs and spices. Smoke from the fire is mixing and blending with the scents of cooking, slightly tinged with the particular tree who gave of their wood to this scene. Perhaps some bread is baking, to dip into the meal. This picture is taking place all over the world, the localised herbs and spices varying what hungry noses are tempted by. What we are observing is highly likely the origin of incense...

Plants, and the scents they release when burned, have inspired, blessed, healed and comforted for eons. Be their form chunks of sap, branches or leaves straight from a tree, or the more processed mixtures of dried and powdered herbs burnt on charcoal, bound to a stick or swung in censors.

A newborn baby is held over a small fire, laced with leaves, be they spinifex or eucalypt, depending on what grows nearby, there is a blessing and welcoming into her new environment by  passing through the smoke. A connecting to plants, and the hearth. For who is the bridge between earth and animals, even human ones, if not plants, it’s been thus since we were pondscum feeding on algae.

On the other side of the planet sage is rolled into a stick, bound in thread and allowed to dry like this, to be later lit and used to ‘smudge’ before a ritual dance, ceremony, or soul retrieval. The smoke brushed around the body using a cluster of eagle wingtip feathers it curls into where its needed, then rises high into the sky, and upper realms of spirit.

Incenses origins often reside in resins and barks. Sandalwood is so desired, that all the trees in Mysore, the place it occurs naturally are government property wherever they occur, and harvesting is watched over. There is also an Australian sandalwood, Santalam acuminatum, a interior species thats being used similarly as an alternative. The seeds of which were traditionally made into necklaces, not unlike the ones in india that saddhu’s wear and consider holy. They look like small round brains, interestingly enough considering the sacredness of them.

With such deep ancestral memories and associations is it any wonder that incense has been adopted by nearly every kind of faith, including atheism, on the planet. A precursor and codeveloper with perfume and aromatherapy, varying scent to mood and occasion. How blessed are we to have such a tool for shifting consciousness at our fingertips? It doesn’t have to be expensive, with a charcoal block any mix of dried herbs can be sprinkled on and encouraged to share its smoke.

Home feeling a bit stagnant? Setting a romantic or meditative scene? Taking a luxurious bath, got a candle going? Bit blue? Why not light up?

woman o the woods....

Comfrey, is she safe?

Today i harvested some comfrey leaves to infuse in oil so i can make a comfrey salve down the track. How green and good does that look? All ready to go in  a cool dark place to brew.
Reconnecting with her , Ithought Id address the much maligned plant. Is she safe?

There are two types of comfrey, wild comfrey (Symphytum officinale) and cultivated comfrey (Symphytum uplandica x , the x means its a hybrid). Wild comfrey is a smaller plant with yellow flowers. Cultivated comfrey is a large plant often surpassing 2 metres with blue or purple flowers. Symphytum uplandica x was created post the 2nd world war by Henry Doubleday as a survival food. People tend to be growing uplandica, and that is what can be sold in stores, mislabeled.

Just to confuse things a little more, the roots and leaves of comfrey contain different constituents. Comfrey root, like most perennial roots, contains poisons. Wild comfrey (Symphytum officinale) leaves contain some of the poisons but cultivated comfrey (Symphytum uplandica x) leaves dont. Comfrey leaves are protein rich, a great source of folic acid, many vitamins, minerals and trace minerals we need for a strong immune system and a calm nervous system. Comfrey ointment heals wounds, cuts, burns, itches and most skin problems.

I once cut myself with a razor, it would have needed stitches. I put a comfrey leaf poultice on the cut, replacing it a couple of times with pressure applied and it closed up and healed, so i look forward to making a batch of ointment and sharing it....even if its not harvested from our wee patch yet...

The banes.

Most of the herbs I use day to day are safely nourishing and able to be used in quantity. I drink them in infusions, tinctures and cook with them. Yet recently i find popping up, mostly in dreams, or shamanic journeys, some other pretty powerfull, and potentially poisonous plants. So far, Henbane (Gafaan, Hyoscyamus niger),  Hemlock ( Muinmhear, Conium maculatum) and Wolfsbane ( Fuath mhadhaidh, Aconitum napellus). Is it the call of the wild, or the draw of the dangerous?

This is the forest primieval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neighbouring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
                                                     Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oddly enough the book I have with the most detail about these plants is in  a textbook on pharmacognosy from the 1930s designed to train pharmacists and medical practitioners of the day. They liked their plants potent, but referred to them as 'crude medicines'. They suggest hemlock as a sedative, one which by the way can kill you via parlysis with your mind totally concious till the end. Spine chilling stuff.

These same plants were allys of a different sort of practitioner in making their much spoken of flying ointments. Salves containing henbane, hemlock and friends rubbed on the skin to aid journeying, or 'flights'. Those chicks knew what they were doing, and would probably have used a specific harvest time and part of the plant to control dosage plus including some seemingly inert ingredients that play a role, knowledge I just dont have at this time. These plants are to be treated with caution, lest we travel roads from which we can no longer return, but also now, and in the past, they are teachers.

deep thou takes me, and far
travelling the world tree
to its rooted source, and branched heights
where dwell spirits and goddesses
remedies and brews remembered
i didnt even know i had forgotten

making space for plant medicines...

Just recently a friend offered me this 1930s cupboard, a little dusty n mouldy, but nothing a bucket of hot bubbly eucaltyptus wash couldnt handle. I decided to use it as our medicine cupboard. I do believe by making spaces for that which we honour and love theres an energy about of drawing these things into our lives. I love making salves, tinctures, elixirs and brews and it lets the plants know that I value their giveaways. Kinda like an altar to herbs eh. One that can be closed up n away too, like those curiousity cabinets folks made in victorian times filled with, well curious stuff. Often bones, talismans, amulets, taxidermy or just plain ol exotic things from far away places. Sitting ontop are all my gathering baskets, sadly unused of late. Also my dried herb ( aka coffee) grinder that I got for a couple of bucks, which was pretty grotty, but cleaned up, sanded back and oiled came up a dream.....
Ive gathered all my herb and gardening books in shelves next to the cupboards, so all in all my plant shrine is rather well rounded. Now hopefully some herbs will cross my path and wanna play! Next task is to design a logo / label to use for my medicines.....