Author Archives: rootleafandflower

Did you know that there are different names for groups of animals?  A group of lions is a pride, crows are a murder, and starlings are a murmuration.  If you’ve ever passed a tree filled with starlings you know why.  Starlings like to do things in groups and one thing they do is truly amazing.  There are a bunch of videos out there depicting their joyous aerobatics but one in particular stands out for me.  It’s a combination of the music and the fact that the birds fly right over the camera person.  It is a very personal moment and it doesn’t fail to move me no matter how many times I watch it.  I suggest watching full screen.  May your year be filled with moments that feel like this:

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I know, I know, I was supposed to provide you with medicine making posts but I got derailed by a few things, including the holidays.  I spent some years working in retail and when you work in retail you do not loose track of Christmas.  It is everpresent in your life from about Halloween on.  But it’s been a few years since I last manned a busy cash register and Christmas now sneaks up on me.  I tell myself each year that I will plan ahead, not leave everything to the last minute.  Right.

Anyway,  here is a present I made for my cousin Jen.  She has a 3 year old child now and this totally boggles my mind.  I used to babysit Jen.  I changed that girls diapers and now she has a kid of her own.  I’m not in denial or anything, I just have trouble grasping the concept.  I hope she likes her necklace, I think it came out pretty cool.

May you all have a very merry holiday and a very happy new year.

The weather over the last few days has been amazing.  Sunny, warm, beautiful.  I’m trying to store it up for the winter months to come, like freezing pesto to eat in the depths of January.  I know that the cold and dark days are just around the corner but I feel okay about it.  Winter has its own stark beauty, its own gifts to give.  For one thing, you get to really see the shape of trees and of the land itself.  And for another, the park is more peaceful and clean.  I like that people enjoy it in the warm weather but sometimes it becomes incredibly noisy and there is always a ton of trash.  I know people who like to bring things to the park as offerings.  My offering to nature is to pick up trash, to take at least one thing out every time I go to the park.  Sadly, there is always at least one thing to take and in the warm months, many things.  In winter we get a break from it all.

Now is the time when I start to make my deep winter remedies.  Wild cherry bark cough syrup, slippery elm lozenges, and balm for dry skin.  It’s very satisfying to have these things ready, to know they will be there when I need them.  I’m also making my Christmas lists.  A few years ago I stopped buying things for people and started giving homemade gifts, mostly food.  I make cookies and chocolates, preserves, conserves, and liqueurs.   I make bath milks, balms, soaps, and sprays.  And then there’s the knitted, crocheted, woven, and sewn items.  I’ve always enjoyed finding just the right gift for each person and making gifts myself ups the satisfaction.  I highly recommend it.

I will share the process as I go along.

What does autumn taste like?  I think autumn tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg, & cloves.  They pervade the foods of fall.  We cheerfully add them to pie, to soup, to cider, to eggnog but we probably don’t think about them as medicine.  At least I didn’t until I started studying herbs.  It turns out that these familiar spices are pretty powerful remedies, particularly for the digestion.  It is no accident that we find them laced throughout our autumn and winter foods.  Those foods tend to be heavier, more difficult to digest.  These spices really help our digestive system to rise to the challenge.  All three of them will ease gas buildup, relieve nausea, and warm up the digestive tract.

Thinking about this leads me to think about traditional cooking.  Often, traditional recipes will bring together foods in ways that aid their digestion and assimilation.  These days we turn to nutritional science and chemistry labs.  Our ancestors had to rely on personal observation.  They observed the effects of different foods and they went with what worked.  To me, this seems like a much better system for figuring out what foods you should eat.  How do they affect you?  Not anyone else, you.  If you have problems digesting a particular food – and it’s not due to an allergy or real intolerance – you might find out how the food was eaten traditionally.  Was ii cooked and you’re eating it raw?  Was it cooked with lots of spices and you’re having it with just salt?  Did it have particular condiments like cheese or milk or a bit of raw vegetable?  Was it soaked before cooking?  What season does this food belong to?  Is it a food your ancestors ate?  Does it grow locally?  Grow your awareness and you may find your digestion begins to improve.

I was thinking this morning that we – in the developed world – live backwards.  In the summer, when nature is at its most active, is when we take our break.  We have off from school, we take vacations and lie on the beach.  Then, in winter when nature is at its least active, when it slumbers and rests, we speed up.  We go back to school, back to work, and we take on the holiday season, dealing with crowds, traveling, and getting generally stressed out.  It’s no wonder that we feel exhausted and depleted.   We are part of nature and our bodies have rhythms that move with the seasons but we ignore those rhythms.
This line of thought led me to consider how to get closer to my natural rhythm while living in the world.  I certainly don’t want to give up the holidays.  I really enjoy them.  I like to spend time with my family, I like all the wonderful food and the other rituals that come with the season, and I like gift giving.  It’s very satisfying to find or create just the right gift.  Then there’s those daily obligations that do not go away just because it is winter.
So I’ve made a list (I love lists) of things that I can do to scale back and allow myself more time for rest and looking inward.

Go to bed a little earlier – by 10pm whenever possible.
Take naps when I can.
Visit the park at least 3 times a week.
Avoid excess caffeine and sugar.
Eat seasonal food.
Sit in stillness and quiet at least 10 minutes every day.
Prepare herbal remedies I might need ahead of time.
Don’t make a giant list of things to make for the holidays.

None of this is onerous, I just have to stick to it.  The only one that is really tough is that last one.  It’s so easy to get carried away with plans for lovely baked goods and knitted gifts.   On the other hand, the second to last item is a joy.

My list of remedies is short.  I like to make a wild cherry bark and licorice syrup and slippery elm lozenges for my throat,  eucalyptus and rosemary salve for putting on my chest and under my nose for stuffiness, and some herbed bath salts for soaking stress away.

I’ll let you know how it’s going as we move into December.

The wet weather we’ve been having lately has been a boon for mushrooms.  They are growing with abandon all over my park.  I love mushrooms, and not just for eating.  They are very cool and can do some amazing things.  Their primary job is to convert plant, animal, and mineral matter into soil and this includes converting toxins.  (Paul Stamets is a mycologist who is raising awareness about fungi and the role they can play in restoring the Earth. To hear him talk about it go here.)  Thinking about the role mushrooms play in the environment can help us understand what they can do for us when we take them as medicine.

Reishi mushroom

You’ve probably heard of reishi mushrooms.  They are used a lot in Traditional Chinese Medicine (Ling zhi or “Spirit Plant”) but they also grow here in the US.  Reishi will work to normalize your immune system, support the detoxification of the liver, and will engage in anti-tumor activity.    Reishi is anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and calming to the nervous system.  It is of particular use if you feel very run down all the time and find yourself getting cold after cold.  As it builds topsoil on the earth so it builds your stamina.

Most of the mushrooms that are considered “medicinal” are on the exotic side – reishi, maitake, shitake – but the common white button mushroom and crimini mushrooms have many of the same benefits for us.  Take advantage of the bountiful crop at the farmer’s market and eat some every day.  They are best cooked – raw mushrooms can be hard to digest.

Shitake mushrooms

Fungi were the first complex organisms to grow on Earth preceding plants by millions of years.  They are our ancestors and we should pay attention to what they have to tell us.  They deserve our respect and if we can work with them we may yet save ourselves and the eco-system we depend on.