Healing plants
Plantain and the Scorpion
Plantain: for stings, bites and stuckness Plantain, both broadleaf and narrow leaf, are wonder plants, plants with superpowers. It dispels the itch and burn from bites and stings almost instantly and more more effectively than anything you can buy. I…
Flower Essences for Mirror Dogs
Dog healers, teachers and mirrors All dogs are healers and teachers, forever loyal and loving, living mirrors to the emotional tides that move through us. Each dog will have his or her own specialty, derived from the genetics and experience…
Garlic: friend or foe?
Yes, garlic one of those kind of friends. Good on the right occasion; generally OK in small doses, but can easily become over-powering and leave you with a bit of a headache. Like anything, too much garlic will have consequences,…
St John’s Wort: Blood from the Sun
This is my St John’s Wort oil from last summer – you can see why I call it blood from the sun. The five yellow petals in a star formation, have the power to turn oil or alcohol blood red,…
Home Grown Medicine Cabinet
If you make the decision to activate your innate self-healing mechanisms, stay away from the medical system, eat healthily and live as naturally as you can, without doubt your health and vitality will improve. Nonetheless, even if you enjoy excellent…
Yarrow: Chiron’s Arrow
Yarrow, Achillea millefolium is another one of my favourite helper plants (along with St John’s Wort, Melissa and Plantain). It grows wild here through spring and the long summer and I harvest the flowers and leaves and dry and store…
Broccoli Medicine
Growing broccoli Broccoli is one of our garden successes. I sowed seeds of several different types, purple sprouting, green sprouting and the large headed variety – the purple sprouting is the most prolific and easy going by far. It’s been…
Melissa: Queen of the Bee Haven
It’s just before Imbolc and in the garden, Melissa is thrusting her crinkled, heart-shaped leaves through the cold wet clay with wild abandon. I picked some leaves and made a strong infusion and let it cool, so I can sip…
Yellow dock root: badger medicine for a new story
Five years ago, I made a batch of yellow dock root tincture, for no reason at all at the time. It sat stewing silently in the back of my medicine cabinet, waiting for the moment to make its debut. That…
Pennyroyal: Sekhmet’s Gift
Pennyroyal: facts and folklore Pennyroyal, Mentha Pulegium, has a killer reputation. In relatively recent times, several women have died using pennyroyal to end unwanted pregnancies. One was a 23 year old English woman in 1897, who drank a tablespoon of…
