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)
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.
Listening to a podcast about anticolonial approaches to writing herbal monographs for personal use. It’s Sam Roberts on Planting Medicine and it’s good 🌱
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.
What a treat to hear a host on my fave herbal medicine podcast encouraging people to wear masks to protests to protect against covid and long covid. Lots of other good protest safety tips in here, plus some herbal ideas for street medics.
I thought everything might be dead but look at all the treasures! I’m going to rest a bit and head back out for berries.
Normally the scent queen is lemon verbena but today it’s the coriander seed heads that I can smell from the next room.
Going to have a Bear Snack 🐻
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.
Part of growing raspberries is having raspberry suckers pop up everywhere. Why did it take me until today to realize I could harvest leaves for tea while weeding raspberries out of the paths, lettuce, peas, asparagus, potato bed…?
It’s springtime and the trees are waking up. I’m pumped to do some projects from this Leslie Williams webinar about herbal medicine from trees, and become a person who has weird jars full of sticks 🌱
Particularly interested in her suggestion of mahonia / oregon grape as an alternative to the endangered plant goldenseal
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.)
Hawthorn berries are massive and abundant this year, all over town. I wonder what made them so happy
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.
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.
Posting these linden (Tilia cordata) blossoms mostly to prove that not all of my herbalism projects smell weird. These famously smell like a hug.
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.
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.
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…
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?