medicine garden dreamings....

calling in 2011

acknowledging and farewelling 2010

Listening to the plants...terms to translate...

As the last post was about urban wildcrafting and finding, I thought Id take it a step furthur to talk about working with plants, for food and health.
What beauty if in every home we had the wisdom to be our own herbalists? Theres a wave of it happening with food, a masterchef in every home and thats one of the easiest ways to get to know herbs!
But how do we know which ones to use and how much?
We have botanical names (and visual information, our own and such as in many guidebooks) to check out if the plant in our hand is the one we think it might be. A cumulative way to double check that intuition that said, I know that plant I can work with that one.
Hence the creation of broader terms like nourishing, tonifying, stimulating. These terms are designed to let us know how much to use (of which parts) and largely how much those whove gone before us used. But the original messages came from the plants themselves, so its like a translation.
Nourishing herbs are mild enough (yet potent enough to be medicine) to be eaten daily. In salads, like chickweed, dandelion leaf, sow thistle leaf, infact some herbs are best befriended in such ways. Simply steaming greens!
The tonifying herbs are a little stronger but still able to be used in infusions (a strong brew of tea, often overnight) like dandelion root, nettle, oatstraw, members of the mint family. Some oif these names sounding familiar to our front lawns?
Flavouring herbs like rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil are pretty self regulating, their flavour letting us know how much is enough already! Especially stimulating ones like chilli, cardomom, nutmeg. Go overboard and the sniffles set in as the ol mucous membranes wake up, its up to us howfar we go with them (as always).
And it works its way up to power plants like tobacco, hops, generally conciousness changing plants (although they all have that property!) that need to be treated with just that extra bit of respect.

These terms may seem dry and distant from the act of harvesting the plants with bare hands, but they can give us an idea of where in the circle of medicine, food and indeed worship, they sit, as we get more apptitude. Its like a secondary language to the botanical names we use globaly to share plant knowledge. Our ancestors, distant and closer, learned a few things from the plants and so we can learn from them. We are lucky to live in times when this herbal ancestry has been brought to the fore by the work and love of several generations of folks, so that we can double check references as we learn. Unfortuneately for u my reference books are packed in boxes right now so this tasters been improvised!

theres wildness everywhere....

Theres something magical in finding a discarded thing with appreciation for it. The ancient art of 'gleaning' has been with us, probably since agricultural beginnings, where we began to have enough produce to create a surplus. Be that food, or rusty ol chairs (probably post paleolithic). But its kind of a cool cycle where those with less can make use of the excesses of those with more. Thats why the trend to lock supermarket skip bins, or spray them with hydrogen peroxide ( so nothing can be used) sux bigtime. Wildcrafing herbs uses the same skills as chuck out pile collecting, the finding and seeing the value and bounty that others might miss. So even in urban environments our deeply ancestral hunting and gathering skills can come to the fore, and indeed be practiced and honed. Its a way of envisioning whats around us, keeping an eye out for changes and just, noticing. That chairs rusty but it could be comfy seat dreaming with some sanding and a coat of paint, that chickweeds lush (and not in a dog pee zone) think Ill invite her to lunch. This way of being taps into deep seated (excuse the pun) survival skills that are hardwired into our genetics, especially as women. So heres to chuckout pile wildcrafting an urban version of gathering the roots and berries!



oberon...

Soulfood for dogs....

How could I resist? It aint organic, it aint fresh but what a beautyfull energy, all for one can of dogfood. It reminded me of the story my herbology teacher susun weed told about being on  a plane (guaranteed foods not organic or fresh!) and the woman next to her offered half a baloney sandwich (not organic, possibly made fresh for trip) and she paused for a moment, then accepted, because of the spirit in which it was offered. Thats wisewoman nourishment! Soulfood for dogs.....meg scoffed it by the way.....

packing up a medicine garden....

The time has come to begin to pack up ten years worth of daydreams and stardust that came to a pocketfull of  rather solidly gnarly conclusion.
The 'treehouse' has been haven ,and hidey hole, now stripped bare of such warmly associations, I visit to begin to pack, lucky enough to be able to stay elsewhere as I dip into the memory laden contents of the flat.
Dog and I moved in with a fridge, a bed and each other. Over time we have gleaned a patchwork aray of many hued form and colour. ...
Theres the protective buddhist scroll illustrating the layering of buddhism with earlier indigenous bon religion that watches over when Im not there.
The herb drying racks once owned by an apprenticing baker for her loaves who now is a meister.
A victorian handbasin built into a wooden cuoboard so it can be politely folded away.
The bonsais have suffered in my absence, but the little broken buddha and crystals who sits amongst them dont require watering, so continue to flourish.
 Most of the resource library is in boxes, stacked slightly differently to when they inhabited shelves, I miss dipping into their offerings in a quiet moment.
I am trying to be zen about the whole thing, I coculd be on the street, but I like my stuff, some of  it heavy and carried with just hands, at times a skateboard, like the woodfire stove that weighs a bloody ton and I steered down the road on 4 small wheels. It could have burst a hole in theside of a brick wall if itd escaped, but didnt.
The garden has become a wild zone, a force of chaos unto herself, its kinda poetic and metaphorical really. I have seeds from most of the individual plants, stashed for later release and have been assured by a very cheerful rock I met that its meant to be so. What better medicne for an urban apartment block than untremmeled natural chaos!
Local kids have adopted the hammock tentatively, I hope when Im long gone they may venture into uncovering paths, stairs and a new caretaking will begin...not the type of community garden I had in mind, but lifes practicalitys can run eschew to our inner visualisations and imaginings it seems.
Still dont know where it is we're going next, guess thats where the zen comes in. Being in the transition of movement when you can do nothing but relax into uncertainty, Im not real good at it, but am being given ample opportunity for practice *sigh*. Gratitude for having safe houses and folks to be around, as I wait....and wait...and wait....whats the sound of a housing commision phone answered with one hand clapping? I paint....

 

faerie lights

waterspirit...

Orlando n his technicolour cloak

beach snack....

Heres someone succulent id like to introduce, called rather unceremoniously 'pigface'. Probably because of the snoutish shape of her fruit, which turn red when ripe. You pick em, then squeeze the inner juicy part of the fruit out of the skin n into your mouth. Tastes a bit like kiwi fruit, sometimes with natural ocean spray salt added. Not sure on botanical name, but shes a rambling groundcover, with succulent stems running along the sand. Handy for a snack at the beach. Good tucka!                                 

damn to do lists....

Jellyfishmoon

                     

What inspires me at the moment....tacky but true!

Today I ventured into the special collections area of the state library and held an exquisitely leatherbound and brown tinged copy of "The Zankiwank and the Bletherwitch" from the 189os, illustrated by Arthur Rackham. I know, yep, a kids book. It all felt very serious, handing my stack request list in to one desk, ambling over to another part of the library past shelves of georgeously ancient looking texts wondering what mysteries they contained, (could have been bus timetables) until I started reading....downright exquisitely silly! Beautyfull calligraphy and illustrated with etchings of characters odd and bizarre. Exactly the medicine I needed...

Sometimes u just get into the right spot, and timing, for what is needed to reignite some inspiration. Not that I ran home to create any volumous or postumous works, it just felt....gazing out at the branches of the now balding jacaranda, sighingly slightly, good. By godess I even shimmied and isolated a few tribal bellydance moves! Perhaps the dark moon in sagitarius shifted somethingk too. If it did about bloody time!

What else inspires me at the moment?..... Seed packets, stories staring mutants (the ones with their undies on the inside), music that hits a nerve (or massages, or tingles, or draws a tear out), nature (and how patient and generous she is with our species), a clean face (grots delight), travellers and tinkers (some combining the two), rocks (especially in building drystone walls, like a jigsaw), my cat (how patient and generous she is with our species), things quivering on the edge of exhistance (ideas and projects to be yet born) and despite all the shiiiiit of the last year, people. Their abillity for kindness, especially in those moments, when they really cant be fucked being supportive, patient with our species, or are just plain ol busy and tired, but somehow the love gets through it anyways, almost subconciously.

As much as there is shadows, I begin to see again that there is dappled gentle light, not blinding white, but a blended soul mix of dark and light somewhere betwixt....where inspiration whispers personal delights through signs in a cosmic lovesong to us each. Heres to rooting, snuffling, digging, ferreting, photographing, recording, stitching, gathering... whatever your chosen method to find those images, feelings, sounds, tastes, textures, colours, memories, tales, that inspire your senses and faith in the beauty that exhists, sometimes quietly, other times with a ta da and a shabang!