a month with comfrey There is a strangeness to spending a month with a herb that cannot be taken internally. Cannot? An extraordinary tissue-healing herb, he contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids (associated with liver toxicity) so currently EU (and other places) restrict it to external use. Certainly he is a knitting herb, so I’d be wary of … Read more
of attention and hospitality For centuries we have known thin places where the boundary between the quotidian world and the other feels permeable. We call it atmosphere, spirit, genius loci, presence. We sense it along ancient pilgrim paths, on small islands and mountain tops, beside holy wells, in forests or along remote shorelines. We feel … Read more
To turn towards devotion I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, writes Mary Oliver in the poem ‘The Summer Day’ On Wednesday we were in the path of a solar eclipse. The partial phase began … Read more
because life is irreducible Outside the window overlooking the orchard, the apple trees, impossibly green, foliage riotous, first fruit held high to ripen, a chorus of voices blackbirdwrengarden warblerchaffinchsparrowgoldfinchnuthatchrobinchiffchaff Sparrow and blackbird competing for the solo parts above another chorus line, human voices drifting from the tourist gite along the path into the forest, the … Read more
when urgency falls away We have reached the season of Lughnasadh, the first harvest, corn being cut. In the fields John Barleycorn, who laid with the Lady in the woods at Beltane, has aged, bearded and head bent. The Sun has transformed him, green to gold, and his time to leave this life of earth … Read more
a month with self heal Self healHeal allAll healWoundwortHook healHeart-of-the-earthCarpenter’s herbSicklewortBlue curls I have spent this month with Prunella vulgaris, Self heal. She is a member of the mint family and all about adaptability. She likes shade, but will grow in bright sun. She loves well-drained, loamy soil, but will grow in a wide range … Read more
on choosing integrity over boundaries Hawthorn flowers when hawthorn flowers.Oak rests when oak rests.Mistletoe fruits in winter. We think of integrity as moral uprightness, even as a kind of rigidity, but the root of the word in Old French is about innocence and the Latin integritatem speaks of soundness and wholeness, as in an integer … Read more
cooling summer fire Summer heat entering the body. Not simply warmth, something on the edge of discomfort, a feeling for overstimulation — the body held too close to the surface of things. Sleep lightens. Patience thins. Moisture — in the mouth, the skin, the breath — recedes almost imperceptibly. I am reaching for cooling herbs … Read more
Reading from April to June 2026 In a noisy world, whose voices we hear is so often mediated by systems of power and lack of it. The cacophony of a war-making, death-revelling elite may feel the loudest thing in so many lives, but then there are books — witnessing to other ways of being, refusing … Read more
a month with calendula Marigold — growing up the film Hans Christian Anderson was on the TV — a story that weaves its only fairy tale tangentially around a life. What I remembered from the film was the ‘ Inchworm’ song, a critique of a busy business mind always measuring and quantifying rather than observing … Read more