Tag: herbs

Smoke tea 2026

Photo of 3 large mason jars containing different leaves, and one smaller jar containing pale yellow powder. First jar is unlabelled, then "plantain 2023", "anise hyssop 2023", "marshmallow root"

First noticeably smoky day here for a couple of years (lucky us), so I am busting out some smoke tea herbs. Dates on jar lids are not accurate — I moved to a paper inventory.

It has been smoky so often here in the PNW the past 10 years that I grow specific plants just for this purpose, mainly mullein. I guess that is a #ClimateDiary entry

I keep dried plants as whole as possible for storage (less surface area to oxidize or for oils to evaporate), so now I get to witch out with the mortar and pestle to smash them up for tea.

Photo looking down at a blue bowl of dried herbs, a black mortar and pestle with ground herbs in it, and an empty white teapot with the lid off

Anyway I am not a clinical herbalist but here is my method for formulating herbs (choosing which ones to mix):

  • pick a main one (mullein)
  • add one herb to enhance the action you’re interested in (in this case expectorant, so I am adding plantain as another drawing-out herb that is more soothing/moistening)
  • if needed, add one herb to counterbalance or do something else (anise hyssop to make it taste good, and to have one mildly warming herb against the two mildly cooling ones)

Going to steep one cup and taste it, then maybe adjust and make a big batch for the fam

Lol this tea came out so bland– mullein and plantain teas both taste like brown water, so I suppose it takes more than 1/3 anise hyssop to make it delicious. I like tea with some bitterness and body so I tried adding burdock root– closer. (Never hurts to add a liver tonic anyway.) Little touch of lemon verbena syrup that was in the fridge from making mocktails and this has become quite pleasant 💚

I don’t think it needs the marshmallow root that I pulled out in case it was too astringent. Mullein and plantain are both pretty balanced– tannins plus mucilage

Having had my smoke tea, I am sitting at the stove stirring a pot for dinner and going “ahem” a lot. Expectorant tea doing its thing 💚

Coffee for liver health?

I hold all research about economically important commodities really lightly, but this report does make me curious because Western herbalists talk about coffee and liver health a lot. A warm, bitter, carminative drink every morning? Serious liver tonic.

I wish any other bitter plant was consumed enough to get a 13-year prospective study on 350,000+ people.

Re: @digyoursoul https://universeodon.com/@digyoursoul/116947484891480708

A warm infusion method

Photo looking down into a speckled black canning pot containing a wire rack and 3 mason jars with old labels on the lids.

Feeling very pleased with my setup for warm-infusing herbal oils today. I find double boilers tedious and messy, and I wanted to do multiple jars at once. Glad I remembered the gadget I keep around specifically for heating up jars in a water bath.

The jars are not full and I’m not trying to seal them, so they are only submerged about halfway in water.

These are chickweed, calendula, and plantain oils, if you want to guess what I’m making.

(It’s the first test salve of my new area of curiosity — itch relief. Bug bites, autoimmune conditions, drug side effects… turns out once you start talking about it, a lot of people have itches. Including me this week, so i figured i could do some testing)

Valerian <3

shout out to the valerian root tincture i optimistically made several months ago for when i was ready to ease off gabapentinoids for pain. solved the jitters/adrenaline feeling really well.

(valerian is strong and has contraindications– don’t take it without talking someone knowledgeable)

Free Zine: Let’s Make an Herbal Pain-Relief Salve!

Cover of a zine. Let's make an... Herbal Pain Relief Salve! Pen drawing of a small cosmetic jar labelled "hops, yarrow + rosemary" surrounded by sparkles. by sarah PearlOfCivilization.net may 2026

I make bean-less zines pretty regularly but I rarely post them here. Should I start? Let’s try it.

This zine has instructions for making the herbal pain-relief salve I use for endometriosis and ovarian cyst pain, and that I have been sharing with friends and fam since December. It provides strong and immediate but not very long-lasting pain relief for when you need a break. Salve testers found strong relief from pain due to: frozen shoulder, tendonitis, headaches, arthritis, and more. It’s strong!

If you try it out, I would love to hear how it works or doesn’t for you. (Beep me on Mastodon?) If you’re in pain, I hope it eases one way or another <3

Free pain salve zine:

P.S., if you want to try this out before committing to the multi-week process of making a salve from scratch, I should mention that a tincture works too. More people have those around, or an herb shop might have a sample of hops tincture and let you try a drop or two to see what it does for you. The blend is stronger, but hops is the main player. If you know me in person, just ask and I will give you some salve.

nettlekopita?

Today’s small pleasure is that I made delicious spanakopita using a pound of frozen stinging nettles instead of spinach, and because step one is “squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the frozen greens”, I now have about a pint of deep green-black stinging nettle juice in the fridge.

Old friends

I remember herbalist Kelly McCarthy suggesting that good herbs for perimenopause are the ones you already have a long relationship with. To just find ways to incorporate your plant friends into your life a little more, as a starting place, whether that is a digestive bitter, calming tea, moisturizer, good-smelling garden plant, or whatever.

That seems like a good approach for general times of stress or illness too, to start by turning up your existing support.

This random herb thought was brought to you by me running a pain management bath at 4am, and deciding to add rose water and make a rose tea. Rose is not an herb for pain, and yet it is nice to be with my plant friend when I am sore.

Bespoke audiobook narration

Every now and then an audiobook has a feature I didn’t know I needed. This morning I am listening to a chapter about (political) organizing with a chronic illness, and you can hear the author-narrator yawning as she gets through it. Big love from this reader who is also too tired today.

Book is Overcoming Burnout, by Nicole Rose, done as a free private podcast feed. (Nicole is a herbalist I admire, who also wrote The Prisoner’s Herbal, and Herbalism and State Violence.)

Non-weird smells for once

Close photo of a tray of lemon verbena cuttings. Their tender, green leaves grow in groups of three around green stems

My very first harvest of lemon verbena (Aloysia citrodora) is somehow ready to dry. I only rescued this friend from the discount section at Canadian Tire a couple of weeks ago and haven’t gotten around to repotting it, but it managed to transform from straggly to lush and fluffy anyway. On brand somehow– a plant with very happy vibes.

Cracked…

I’m busting out last fall’s dried hawthorn berries for a project today, and realizing that I cracked them before drying. Fun!

It’s my first time trying this method. Hopefully they will steep faster than intact berries, so they work better in herbal tea blends.

Close-up photo of five dried hawthorn berries in a white ceramic bowl. The berries are dark red-brown and somewhat smashed, with the seeds showing. A few have long thin stems attached.

Berry names for birds

I heard one of my favourite bird songs in Coquitlam last night (kʷikʷəƛ̓əm territory), a loopy upward spiral song belonging to the Swainson’s Thrush.

They were singing in a tree in a friend’s yard where my kiddo had been picking salmonberries.

Just like this:

I realized I hadn’t thought about the Swainson’s Thrush since I learned about the idea of using bird names for birds so I went looking for non-eponym common names.

Some Wikipedia editor loves that bird song as much as I do, because after Olive-Backed Thrush they listed Reverbius Maximus Harmonius.

I realized even harder, that since the last time I heard Swainson’s Thrushes singing I had read the excellent book Held By The Land, by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh herbalist Leigh Joseph.

She mentions a story about the thrushes singing to make the salmonberries ripen, and I remember that reading that made me yelp in delight because even I, who have picked salmonberries maybe three times, associate those bird songs and those berries.

I re-read that page of Held By The Land just now, and she gives another name for the Swainson’s Thrush: Salmonberry Birds. I think I’ll go with that for my #BirdNamesForBirds.

Big bombus

Photo of a fuzzy bumblebee feeding in purple sage flowers. The bee is black with two yellow stripes on the thorax and one yellow stripe on its butt.

More yard bumblebees … I started noticing them while doing an herbalism practice of visiting the same plants often to see what changed. Turns out different plants have different bumblebees (of course). These ones love the sage.

My best guess is Bombus flavifrons, the yellow-fronted bumblebee, but I’m going to try to hit up the BC Native Bee monthly zoom to get a more solid ID.

Update: several bee nerds agree this is more likely Bombus californicus. Related update: the BC Native Bee monthly study group is a lot of fun.

Weird smells time again

Aww yeah it’s time for my favourite part of any [online] experience– using the #WeirdSmells hashtag. I managed to forage some hawthorn (Craetagus crus-galli) flowers to dry for tea, and now my kitchen smells like it is trying to attract flies for pollination…

Photo of flowering hawthorn tips on a tray-- clusters of simple white flowers with a few dark green leaves attached.

Because I always like to include an ethical note about foraging– these Eastern hawthorns are invasive here, cultivated as public boulevard trees, and the city has a commitment to avoid spraying them except in a few circumstances. Perfect urban foraging conditions?