Checking In, You, and Lavender Wand Recipe

 Corn in our backyard -- in December!  Art by Jane

It's been quite some time since I've posted!  Thank you for sticking with me!.

Just to let you know what's up with me and my blogs.  I've just started a new website and blog, Singing Deer Healing, which is devoted to sharing a soul-nourishing, imaginative, nature-connected life with children.  If you like this blog, you may enjoy that one too.

After puzzling how to proceed (eep, how many blogs can I keep going?), I've decided to continue this one.  It has become a focus for my chronicling my attempts to live a 'magic' life with my own children and my herbal medicine making journey. ... And I feel restful in this space :-).  I don't know how often I will write this blog ... it's probably going to follow a slower gait than, say, Singing Deer Healing or Jane's Medicine Tree (or a possible fourth blog I have in mind centered on  moms and culture), but I'm pretty sure I'll post once or twice a month.  So if that works for you, I invite you to continue reading!

 You
This is a great time for me to get to know you.  What do you love in life?  What is the greatest challenge for you right now?  What have you enjoyed in this blog?   Perhaps I'll just boldly ask "Why are you here?" :-).

What is your greatest wish for the planet?  For your home life?

If you had one message you could deliver to the world that would be truly heard and tended to, what would you say?

Please jot your thoughts in the Comments below.  I'm so delighted and honored that you're here! 

Lavender Wand Recipe 
Awhile back Lauren asked for cooking times and temps for this recipe.  Okay, Lauren, here's the whole recipe--finally!  It uses lots and lots of sugar.  I wonder if it's possible to vary the recipe successfully using honey?  Something for me to experiment with in the future ...  Anyway, here's the recipe.

Preheat oven to 150 F degrees.

In a pan, bring 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water to a boil.  Take 30 wands of lavender (do not remove from stem) and place the buds in the boiling sugar water leaving the stems out of the pan.  Reduce heat to medium high, and let boil for 10 min.

Put a thin layer of sugar onto a cookie sheet, to cover the entire sheet

Remove the wands from the sugar water (you can keep the sugar water to use in some other delicious way!) and place them on the sugared cookie sheet.  Spread the wands in a single layer. 

Pour 1 cup of sugar evenly over the wands (yeah, this recipe uses tons of sugar!).  Let set for 2 min.  Turn wands over and sugar again.

Take another cookie sheet, and place the sugared wands on it in a single layer. (save the sugar from the other cookie sheet and when it's cool, store it in a jar in the fridge to have lavender sugar on hand for baking, etc.)

Bake the wands for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool.

Enjoy!  Kids--and the kids in us--just love these enchanted treats!

 

Sharing Herbs - Also: A Little On Mullein Oil

With three nieces ages 5, 13, and 15 living just blocks away, I have the perfect opportunity to share the joys of herbs with my extended family. I decided to start with "fun, nourishing, and sweet" -- creating some delicious concoctions that would draw everyone into the enchanted realm of plants with no challenges.

First up, we created our own herbal chai. Filling a saucepan with water, I brought out bundles of dried herbs and spices, and invited them to smell each, and scatter some in. With comments, appreciation (ginger, elder berries, cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom pods), debate (burdock root, dandelion root, licorice root), critiques (I let them smell elecampane and boneset, just for fun), we concocted our chai, then set it on the stove to decoct -- letting it simmer for 20 minutes after just reaching a boil. To ensure that everyone gave the chai a good try, I added some hot chocolate. My friend and fellow sound healer, Celestine Raye, who is a mistress of incredible herbal tea concoctions, sometimes adds hot chocolate to her brews, adding a smooth creamy taste to it. (She also adds coconut oil -- yum!).

A big lump of hot chocolate mix tumbled in, probably not adding too much to the flavor (or taking away, as the case might be), but adding excitement and enticement to the whole thing. I offered milk to be added as willed. The teenagers drink their chai "as is", and the little girls drank it with plenty of milk, but all of the chai delightedly vanished. So: success! Amri suggested in the future we might try adding Dagoba's Xocolatl mix--hot chocolate with chilies and cinnamon--to our chai. Lovely idea! Perhaps not for the little girls, however ....

In addition to making our chai, we plucked a bunch of lavender sprigs from the blooming plant in once-upon-a-time Victory garden. We then made sugared lavender, and from the quantities of sugar used in that process, made lavender sugar. Not a whole lot of nutrition in this project, but we certainly connected with Lavender's open-hearted and friendly spirit!



Above: boiling the lavender in sugar water
Left: Lavender sprinkled with (lots!) more sugar before being baked.
Below: Sugared Lavender after baking. The excess sugar from both processes above was saved for other cooking use.

Other projects:

Today I opened the jar of Mullein Oil I started back in Joseph, OR. A month ago exactly! It's hard for me to believe that it's been less than a month since we left. I smell the oil, and it actually smells similar to my Black Cottonwood oil, though less honey-like. Yes, they are both infused in olive oil, but there is a hint of honey here too. I screw the lid back on and set it back into the dark. In two more weeks I'll probably strain out the Mullein and have my Mullein Oil ready for use during the next cold season.Mullein next to Dandelion, back in Joseph, Oregon a month ago. Mullein, like Dandelion, seems to thrive in open, disturbed places. Dandelion is a great liver detox herb and blood purifier. Mullein infusion is useful for healing bronchial conditions. I'll be using the Mullein Oil for soothing and healing ear infections. So, with these properties in mind, how might Mullein and Dandelion be working to heal the bit of land (area around a house) pictured above?

Ah, Rose. dear Rose ...

Roses still bloom on shrubs that my grandparents planted decades ago.

Playing in the garden today, I went from rose bush to rose bush, intoxicated with the notion of creating with my friend Rosa spp. I finally settled with one dark pink bush with lovely unfurling blooms. The blooms had that lovely rose scent, but light--not thick like soap. So, with mason jar in hand, I plucked a bloom, separated the petals into the jar. I added a few sprigs of lavender and a single bit of cedar leaflet from the garden, and some bits of dried satsuma peel to the mix (I can hardly ever confine myself to a single herb when I create with plants!). After that, I filled the jar halfway with filtered water and set it out in the sun for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, I nibbled a rose petal, inhaling that delicate scent of grace, and my mouth drying. Astringent. Is experience I have of Rose in my mouth warming? Cooling? Neutral? My first thought was neutral--such an unromantic word for such a heavenly flower. But a second nibble seemed to fill me with the faintest of sense of warm. Certainly I feel warmed in spirit when I am with Rose, so I go with that sense. That's my experience today of Rose.

Tonight I strain out the petals and peel. A faint citrusy fragrance as I twirl the water, and that waft of rose. The water is a pale yellow-orange. Perhaps a slight rose blush to the color, perhaps not. I sip and taste ... lemon! But further swallows separate the flavors. Rose, certainly. Orange/citrus -- ever so slight. Perhaps I can distinguish the lavender. Cedar, I can't taste, but the ancient mother sense of cedar is in the mix for me. I wonder: if I infuse just the smallest bit of cedar in one jar of water, and then later have one of my daughters fill three cups: two with plain water and one with the faintest-bit-of-cedar water, would I be able to sense with assurance the cup that held the spirit of cedar? An experiment for sometime soon!

Back to my rose sun tea:

Really, the smell and taste verges on soap. But if I separate myself, just the smallest bit, I return to my grandmother's rose garden in my heart and mind, the garden from which I plucked these herbs. My garden. That grace of rose resumes, and it is as if sunlight infuses my spirit. Can it be that this infusion is cleansing my spirit? That's the feeling gentling through me!

Rose Elixer
Kiva Rose has an enticing recipe for Wild Rose Elixer on her blog. What I created today is perhaps a gaudy relative of hers.

I plucked a rose bloom, separated the petals into a small mason jar, filling it. Then I filled the jar the rest of the way with kirschwasser--cherry brandy--which is the only brandy I have in the house, bought for who knows what recipe years ago, and barely used in all that time. Wild roses are ever more subtle than this cultivated bloom I used. And cherry brandy! Well, perhaps the cherry part of the brandy will add another medicinal quality to the mix. I'll have to research just what kirsch is, how it's made. And what are the medicinal qualities of cherry?

Okay, Wikipedia tells me that kirschwasser is made from distilled, fermented morello cherries (a sour cultivar), with the pits (stones) included. Perusing Herbalpedia 2007 tells me that cherry, a member of the Rose family, is useful for respiratory and arthritic problems. I'm reminded that cherry bark is often used in herbal cough syrups. Hm!

How might the respiratory assistance qualities of Cherry support those of Rose? From a plant spirit medicine perspective, I consider the heart-opening nature of Rose, its nature for me as a spirit balm and its protective, fierce, and wild nature (think of Rose's thorns, and how even domesticated Roses like the ones in my garden, can snag and entangle you when you are unaware). I think of the hearty nature of Cherry, the bold bright or sour flavor that we delight in so much as children and as adults, if we leave off our fastidious natures (spitting out pits, dribbling cherry juice, staining our fingers ....). When I consider Cherry I think of generosity, friendliness, invitation, frolic. So perhaps this Rose-Cherry Brandy Elixer may support in uplifting my heart, and soothing away those things that choke me up -- coughs, inflexibility in my thoughts and emotions. Perhaps this gregarious elixer with support an ease and flexibility in my being, and encourage a gentle and freeing wildness to emerge ... These are my fancies right now. We'll see in just what way this elixer nourishes my well-being in future weeks.