Tag: Plants
Happy Spring
Plants are expressing their life force as they emerge from the soil to meet the light.
Aphrodisiac Honey – to give you Spring Fever!
Honey – 1 quart, local raw wildflower or buckwheat honey
Red Roses – 1/2 cup
Orange blossoms – 1/2 cup
Blood Orange peels – 1/4 cup
Tangerine peels – 1/4 cup
Vanilla bean – 1 bean cut open and scraped, include all parts
Dark Cacao powder – 2 tablespoons, sweetened or unsweetened
Cinnamon powder – 1 teaspoon
*Red Pepper flakes – a pinch
*optional
These amounts are approximate suggestions, adjust to suit your taste.
Put all (or some if you can’t get all) of the dried herbs into a quart jar and cover with the honey.
Stir and wait as long as you can! It will be good in a day, and get even better as it ages!
Six weeks? Six months? Your call! You can…
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Drinking in Spring: Red Flowering Currant Elixir — Gather Victoria
Right now in my back garden, a Red Flowering Currant Bush (Ribes sanguineum) is in full radiant bloom. Her drooping clusters of “soul-piercing pink flowers” are sending out an entrancing floral, fruity and spicy perfume. Which is probably one reason ethnobotanist and author Abe Lloyd describes the blossoms as “capable of transforming winter sodden pessimists…
via Drinking in Spring: Red Flowering Currant Elixir — Gather Victoria
Benefits of Organic Blue Tea – Butterfly Pea or Asian Pigeonwing
Native to South-East Asia and India is the butterfly blue pea, a beautiful cerulean floral creation, which has been an important ingredient of traditional medicine in this part of the world since the era of ancient civilizations. For a flower, to have endured through several centuries is indeed credible and what is more noteworthy is the fact that its importance remains undiminished and unaffected by the passage of time. There could only one explanation for this continued sustenance – the natural presence of curative and therapeutic attributes that easily transit into lukewarm water like its color and can be consumed as such.
Amongst the several exotic beverages that are prepared with the butterfly blue pea flowers, one of the simplest as also the most appealing is organic blue tea. In the phrase ‘organic blue tea’, while the word ‘blue’ owes its presence to the color that is typical of the…
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WILDCRAFTING: GETTING TO THE ROOT OF OUR ETHOS
We use the terms “wildcrafted” and “wild-harvested” when describing products. Specifically, this term refers to the aromatics – the essential oil scent blends that transport you to another place, another time and bring the mountains into your home.
Wildcrafting is not some trendy thing. In fact, humans have been wildcrafting since we could walk. The term, however, is new to our industry and to the vocabulary of consumers. Let’s explore what wildcrafting means to us.
Wildcrafting is the practice of harvesting things in the wild for our use. Whether that comes in the form of decorative art (think bones, branches, grasses), wild foods (think mushrooms, berries, nuts), medicinal herbs, or aromatics, wildcrafting is done for pleasure, necessity and tradition by some peoples and to our great benefit.
In our case, we harvest aromatic ingredients to scent our bath, body and home products. Wildcrafting helps us absorb the beauty of nature…
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Native foods including rare strains of corn, beans and squash making a comeback
Druidry for the 21st Century: Plant-Based Spiritual Supplies and Global Demand
Can you even imagine druidry without plants or trees? Plants and trees are some of our strongest allies for the work that we do, and are often connected to almost everything that we do spiritually. Plant spirits are teachers, guides, and allies. From before we had recorded history in any culture, the plant spirits were there, growing with us, guiding us, healing us, and supporting us on our journey. Today’s modern druid practice continues that tradition: we burn plants for smoke cleansing, clearing, and helping to energize spaces. We use trees as part of divination and sacred rites. We use plants as healers, for magical healing and physical healing, and to connect with on deep levels. Plants have long been friends of humans–and have long walked beside us, hand in hand, as we do our sacred work. And today, we’ll explore ways we can offer that same kind of honor…
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Aromatic Herb for March; Spring Herb: Cicely {Myrrhis odorata}
Also, Known As:
- Anise Fern
- British Myrrh
- Cicely
- Cow Chervil
- Garden Myrrh
- Shepherd’s Needle
- Smooth Cicely
- Sweet Bracken
- Sweet Chervil
- Sweet Cicely
- Sweet Myrrh
The plant called the sweet cicely is a hardy and robust herb. The cicely is an aromatic perennial herb indigenous to the mountainous areas of Europe and Asian Russia – growing originally only in these regions. The cicely when fully mature can reach 0.6 to 0.9 m or 2 to 3 feet in height. Sweet cicely is one of the first herbs that come up when spring arrives; the sweet cicely is a pretty plant and makes a beautiful backdrop to a perennial border in mountainous regions where it grows.
In older times, people would usually grow this old cottage garden perennial at a site near the door to the kitchen. The site would be chosen so that the pretty divided fern-like leaves could be easily…
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Spring Cleaning! The Magical Besom — Gather Victoria
Happy Spring Equinox! Blue skies and blossoms, what a day to welcome the official coming of spring! I was up bright and early today with a mission. To craft one of the most hallowed objects of spring cleaning – the Besom. I’ve been so busy with my cookbook and creating rewards for Patrons, my home…
Medicinal and Culinary Uses for the Shy Violet
While violets’ delicate blossoms are a treat only for the observant, the plant has enjoyed a long history of medicinal and culinary use.
Leigh Hunt, an English Romantic essayist, and poet is the first known author of the phrase “shrinking violet.” In 1820, he published a passage describing a bit of woodland in The Indicator, a poetry magazine: “There was the buttercup, struggling from a white to a dirty yellow; and a faint-colored poppy; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrinking violet.”
Hunt was almost certainly referring to the native English, or sweet, violet (Viola odorata). This shy plant can often go unremarked underfoot, and it carries its small, slightly recurved flowers level with or just below its leaves. The phrase “shrinking violet” took a few decades to catch on — but when it did, it spread rapidly, much as its parent plant does…
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Paths I Walk 
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