walking with herbs that warm and calm We are terrains. Bodies in geography. Bodies within which an extraordinary array of other creatures live — some unwelcome (candida, lice, intestinal parasites…), some essential (healthy skin bacteria like Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium and Propionibacterium and the approximately thirty-nine trillion inhabitants of our intestinal ecosystems). Our gut microbiomes are home … Read more
when the body’s ecology changes So often healing is seen as ‘getting back to normal’. Didn’t we hear that during the height of the pandemic? And yet, we know that nothing ever works in that direction. I’m never going to have the terrain of my 25-year-old self before four caesarian sections, three work place assaults … 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
working with drop doses in herbalism and in life Working with herbs, it’s often the case that certain conditions need a ‘dose’ that is sufficient for the task. Yet, increasingly, I’m fascinated by the practice of working with drop doses. This often means 1–5 drops of tincture, medically insignificant in mainsteram terms, and sometimes diluted … Read more
vinegars, oxymels and the joy of making vinegars We’re moving deeper into Autumn. Soon we’ll be at Samhain, the Celtic festival that ends and begins a year and marks the slide into midwinter. But for now, there are the last of the berries, crops of root veg and wild roots to forage. There are so … Read more
The festival of Golden Gorse (Lughnasadh) We’re in the season of the first harvests, Lughnasadh. It’s the first of the Celtic festivals of Harvest, at the height of summer when grain is gathered. A time for long, warm mellow days, the last glow of the summer, celebrating the abundance of the earth and moving between … Read more
crafting life creatively with horsetail Herbs have a way of entering our lives at just the right moment. At the beginning of the year I drew 13 herbal oracle cards — one for each month, one for the year. Some came as a delightful surprise — like bluebell. One felt odd — not unwelcome, but … Read more
crafting life creativel with dandelion For the whole of May I was moving from place to place. Some of this was for wonderful events to celebrate 20 years of Cinnamon Press, an indie publisher I founded and now help curate in its new not-for-profit status. This month we are on our travels again — this … Read more
listening to herbs in the moment A hot day at the end of May. My twelfth birthday. The car has lumbered onto the moors. We’ve stopped in Kilbutn to admire the mouseman’s oak furniture. My mother remains in the car while the rest of us — Dad, sister, schoolfriend and me — head up Sutton … Read more
the immersive shades of bluebells Recently, reading Eowyn Ivey’s beautiful novel, Black Woods, Blue Sky, I was perplexed when one of the characters, knowledgeable in herbs, shows a child how to eat bluebell flowers. No! Surely not. Bluebells are poisonous to ingest — root, leaf and flower. But then there is the Latin name and … Read more