Skullcap + Turtlehead

Skullcap only grows wild in the most beautiful, serene forest streams. Pretty much. Which is why it brings such a sense of peace to many people. This I think, having met the plant in it's native home.

Turtlehead sometimes grows nearby. Its flower is a turtle head - seriously. Sticking its tongue out. And it can be used medicinally - it gives people giggles. Giggleiferous. Haven't tried out my tincture yet... Check it.

summer time

in june, i started going to an herb class being taught by a really wonderful local herbalist, corinne boyer. there are five other people in the class and we meet every week at corinne and her partner's farm in shelton, wa, which is a rural town near olympia. it's sooooo beautiful, she has 40 acres of woods in which to wildcraft, a stream, pastures, the world's most charming milk cow...and i have been learning a lot! it has been keeping me really excited about the millions of ways to interact with and learn about herbs.
yesterday was one of my favorite classes. we learned about and made a bunch of different smoking blends, smoked them out of wooden pipes and drank cherry wine. i was really excited to learn that you can smoke almost any medicinal herb as a way of getting its benefits, and also that when smoking out of a tobacco-style pipe you don't need to inhale to get the benefit of the smoke, you can just puff on it and your mouth's mucous membranes will absorb the properties. which is wonderful for me, the world's most inelegant inhaler of smoke.
i was especially happy about my smoking blend cause everything in it was either wildcrafted by me or hand picked by someone i knew. it had our local and incredibly magical kind of mugwort (artemisia suksdorffi), sweet annie from the herb pharm, ceanothus leaves from williams, mullein from my classmate, and some hops from corinne's friend. it tasted really artemisian and bitter at first, with a magical sweet annie fragrance afterward.

i've also become totally enchanted with yarrow, a plant i never really noticed before, but it's everywhere here and so beautiful. the bitter, sweetly fetid smell is enchanting. i went wildcrafting in a prairie and found bright creamy white yarrow that smells like rotting honey and sunlight. some pink yarrow came up in my backyard too!
in addition to helping external bleeding, yarrow also has an affinity for all kinds of blood-related things, including cramps and stagnant blood. it is a really strongly purifying and healing and protecting plant. it is also one of those plants is a good example of how wise herbs are; it can both cause and stop the same symptoms, depending on who takes it and in what context. i think that is really magical. yarrow knows what it's doing in there. there's a string of seven bundles of yarrow drying next to my bed and it has made my little room feel like the coziest and witchiest spot.

i hope everyone is well, i miss you all like crazy.
<3

found in meadows: RED CLOVER

I spent the morning in meadows, grateful, picking red clover flowers.

Trifolium pratense

According to wikipedia), in Latin, pratense means "found in meadows."

And it's true!red clover

On the last day of June, I drove out to a friend's farm here in central Kentucky. There are a few old horse pasture fields where now chicory, clover, daisies, thistle, poison ivy, etc. grow.

old tobacco/horse barn & daisies

Red clover is the first flower I ever harvested at herb pharm, and for that I feel a special connection to it. It's a warm, nourishing herb, and a delicious tea. I like it for menstrual cramps (sometimes with a shot of brandy) and Rosemary Gladstar says it's an 'excellent detoxifier or blood purifier,' and is used also for respiratory problems. It's a very strong, feminine herb, and the bees like it too.

Another thing I like about red clover is that it grows everywhere. Good medicine from the good earth! It's easy to find, especially on farms and in pastures. On my friend's organic farm there was so much I was able to easily follow overharvesting wildcrafting guidelines and leave plenty for the earth. I mostly stayed away from tractor paths, too.

inspired by m. blankets' 'harvesting apron' and my wildwoman ancestors
who have for eons gathered flowers in their skirts as they roamed

I also had for company Luna who has taught me how to live with abandon, leap through fields, follow my nose, and smile into the wind.

luna: LA LOBA

The days have been hot, and since I'm still sojourning and don't have my own herb shed [yet!], the best place to dry these flowers, I figured, was my car.

north lexington's favorite place to dry herbs

And then we'll have tea.

M. Bankets vs Staph

So this story is kind of gross, but if you push through, there's a happy ending.

There is a show space here in Columbus that is practically a superfund sight (really really dirty and nasty). My boyfriend returned home one night from said space with a medium sized gash on the front of his leg close to the ankle. Being a terrible herbalist, and also drunk, I didn't clean it out or anything. One night later he got a fever. We took his temperature at 101. I remember something about fevers being the bodys way of trying to fight infection. Most herbalists ive talked to are against suppressing fevers unless the person with one is a baby or an old sick person. Instead a lot of people talk about helping the fever untill it breaks itself. this sounded like a good idea to us because his ankle was clearly infected and that was the only reason we could figure for a random fever. I know yarrow is good for this but i didnt have any so we used wild ginger. a dropper full in some water. a half hour later his fever was 102! I dont know if the ginger did it, but i like to think so.
The next morning he woke up totally fine but said to me " i had this really weird zit on my foot this morning" Hmm.. thats funny I dont think ive ever had a zit on my foot. The "zit" was about three inches away from the original wound which was looking really really bad. I've had staph before and knew right away thats what it was. We started spraying goldenseal on the wounds and i had him take it internally 4 X's a day. We also tried using lemmongrass essential oil topically and internally (just one drop in some water) because we had some stuff in our notes about that being the best essential oil for staph but about 5 days after starting the lemmon grass he overdosed on (just felt sick and somehow knew it was the lemmongrass) so we stopped taking it internally and just stuck with golden seal and oregon grape. We also cleaned it as much as possible.
its a week and a couple days now and that shit's almost gone! I'm sure antibiotics would have done the trick a little sooner but staph cant become immune to herbs because every batch of herbal medicine has tons of variables that make it diffrent everytime whereas pharmacuticals are chemical identical batch to batch so the virus can "figure them out".
If i had it to do over i think i would have not sprayed tincture directly on the wound because alchohol kills healthy tissue too, maybe instead burned out the booze or put it in a little water.
Can anyone remember what the deal with activated charcoal and staph was? i didnt have it in my notes but remember Tyler talking about it.
now if only i could figure this cough i have out...

Lets hear about other peoples herbal triumphs!

friday night

what's your favorite latin name for an herb?
right now mine is definitely
OPLOPANAX HORRIDUM (devil's club)
i really hope i see one of these somedayyyy.

love,
nicole (kind of drunk in a coffee shop that feels like the inside of a ship)

p.s. does anyone wanna move to the bay area with me next year? i might be goin to herb school!!

in the club

Sisters and brother!

I just ran across a file in my itunes that made me laugh and miss you all so much...

"if we close our eyes, it could just be me and you..."

<3 thanks for the smiles...

lyss - i hope you're rockin' the fiddle right now...

my trip to the natural doctor in mexico

...and on the Eighth Day, I hungered.

i know these posts of mine describing my central american health can be a bit self-indulgent, but this one will make you laugh. *sneak preview: i vomit at a waterfall and get a shot in my rear!

also, to make up for it, i will share a sexy poem that is slightly related to the topic at hand.

Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,
no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquiciar,
busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.

Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero,
tengo hambre de la pálida piedra de tus uñas,
quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra.

Quiero comer el rayo quemado en tu hermosura,
la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro,
quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas

Y hambriente vengo y voy olfateando el crepúsculo
buscándote, buscando tu corazón caliente
como un puma en la soledad de Quitratúe.

(Pablo Neruda, Soneto XI)

(unfortunately, i couldn´t find an official translation in english. but if you want you could probably google translate it.)

so. it has been more than a week that i have been sick with an intestinal bacterial infection. i confess. i had become complacent--even lazy, overadmiring street food and eating with unwashed hands. but then i vomited, publicly, while enjoying a nice day at a waterfall, and for a week i wasn´t hungry, so i didn´t eat.

finally, eight days later, i awoke with a craving for cake. i´m a lucky girl with good friends so no sooner was my wish expressed, it was granted, thanks to my good friend jessica, who whipped up a chocolate vegan cake in mere moments. after the cake, i went to the doctor. but first i had to find him.

a friend had drawn a map in my journal of where to find the office--through a door between a clothing store and a music store. i found the door and began to ascend the stairs when someone asked me what i sought. when i told him, he said, "he´s not here, mi amor. he´s there, behind the cd store.") perfect! another opportunity to browse the bootlegged reggaeton cds. but, my priorities straight, i instead breezed past enrique iglesias, prince royce and pitbull and up the red staircase to the clínica medica naturista.

i found him (not prince royce), the only person in the office, a calm, intelligent médico naturista in a white linen shirt with a sunlit office full of herbal tinctures on glass shelves and white walls with faded posters. he took my temperature under my arm, asked me what i´d been eating (the culprit, he surmised, the fresh coconut water (and, sometimes, fresh bacteria, too) i´d grown so fond of--sold in plastic bags with ice and a straw from trays balanced on ladies´ heads at the bustling market).

he asked me how i´d been feeling, if i´d taken any medicines (i´d taken hp´s willow/meadowsweet for the fever, and i´d even let my doctor friend give me a shot in the rear to reduce the inflammation of my stomach. apparently butt shots are all the rage in mexico.) but, wanting to avoid antibiotics, i opted for another route.

then he listened to my intestines (which were probably quite talkative), and, after a few friendly questions about what i was doing in mexico, gave me some herbs (tinctures) and a list of foods to avoid, including a stern admonishment to avoid all street foods ("no bolsitas de agua de coco!" he wagged his finger and smiled), which i know i must oblige, at least until i feel better.

THE HERBS
(take 25 drops every six hours in 1/4 cup of water)
Castellia (Castellia Texana)
Ceratophillia (Chaparro Amargo) Castella Emoryi (CRUCIFIXION THORN--ay!)

i´m not sure what they are in english. one of them smells like valerian.
*EDIT: i went back two days later to have a chat with the doc. he was watching tv (either a documentary or a telenovela, i couldn't tell...) when i came in, and politely turned it off and invited me to sit down. we chatted for twenty minutes about herbs, mexico, tourism, health, and i even schooled him on all the vegetarian restaurants in the city.

i asked him to clarify his doctor's handwriting so i could decipher exactly what the herbs are. ceratophillia is chaparro amargo, native to northern mexico, but still don't have much more information about the other.*
FOODS TO AVOID:
beans, radishes, cauliflower, watermelon, melon, raw salads and uncooked vegetables, papaya (but the seeds are okay!), spicy food, and, in capital letters, ALIMENTOS CALLEJEROS (street food)

the entire thing--consultation, tinctures--cost less than fifteen dollars, which, though a lot of pesos, is pretty good considering what natural medicine can cost in the us.

so, for one week, this is my treatment. in seven days´ time, i will comment on my condition. it certainly feels good to be hungry again!

a few words of wisdom.

"¡¡como bien,
me siento bien!!"

--the shirts at the local vegetarian restaurant
(i eat well, i feel well!)

por todo mal...mezcal!
por todo bien...también!

--a favorite saying
(for everything bad, mezcal! for everything good, the same!)

may you be well, and hungry.
xoxo