This week is back to school week for many, but for the first time in thirteen years, it's not for me. Instead I packed my husband's lunch (#tradwife is a thing, my daugher in law tells me, and I'm happy to embrace that) and waved him off, and breathed a sigh of relief. I adore my soul partner, but I also need space to simply be.
Despite having six weeks not at work, I'm still exhausted. It's like I need chance to recover from the last few years of stress. Summer has been busy - we've been fixing up the house to sell, travelling Tasmania, and making some life decisions. My father's cancer has also come back, which adds an extra layer of worry. We're all okay about it, including him, but that doesn't stop the clutch that grief has on the heart when I allow my mind to go there. It's painful on the body, life.
The Herbal HIVE challenge this fortight is about REST and medicinal plants. I've been thinking all week about what I'd share about, and in the end, I feel exactly as @traisto wrote in her post - that just being amongst nature is a kind of medicinal therapy that calms the mind and soothes the soul. Sometimes you don't need to do much at all with plants, just be with them.
As I slip into the quiet of being alone this week, I still find myself shaking jars of herbs and vinegars, adding plants to the drying rack, plucking calendula, heartease and chamomile from the garden, eating basil straight from the garden, drying mullein, gotu kola and lavender. Hello bees, I say. Hello butterflies. Hello sunshine. My heart sings with joy despite the other things going on in the background of my life. Poetry enters my head again.
I wonder at how it is possible to be doing and resting at the same time. I loved the verb @traisto's friend uses - it's a 'selfing' that isn't about self love or self care or anything egotistical, but just having the chance to be you. As if there's a kind of oneness with all the other creatures and living beings (including plants) which are busy 'selfing' too, in their essential nature. I can almost feel myself sigh on a cellular level, easing into gentleness.
It's been super hot so I sit in the garden with my feet in a cool path where yarrow, heartease, calendula and chamomile float. I love herbal flowers - they are a medicine of pure joy. The sunny disposition of calendula, the playfulness of colourful wild pansies, the showy pinks of yarrow.
The roses are still blooming, and every early morning walk I pluck the ones that hang over fences - enough to fill my pockets but not so the plant or the garden owners would notice. Rose makes for a lovely iced tea, and in fact, with some tulsi and lemon, the taste is almost identical to tea itself. It's good for anxiety and stress relief, as is tulsi, with the added benefit of being full of vitamin C and antioxidants! It's funny how plants right under our noses. How many times have you been told to stop and smell the roses, when we could also be eating them!
I simply let it steep and cool, add ice cubes and slices of frozen lemon, and sip in the heat. Tulsi, or Holy Basil, is a lovely adaptogen - I grow the kapoor variety easily in my greenhouse, and it's even taken off in the wicking beds with the ordinary basil too.
But that's not all I do with rose. When the petals dry, I grind them to a powder in my coffee grinder, and add a few drops of rose oil and some lovely, soft kaolin clay. When mixed with water, it turns a lovely colour from purple to red, depending on the colour of the petals. Rose is gorgeous for the skin, but the scent alone is enough to melt you into a love puddle.
For breakfast I add lemon balm and tulsi to a banana and mango smoothie. I need more ashwagandha powder, but I'm waiting to dig up the roots from my plants, which should be very soon. I feel almost everything I ingest is to nourish and calm my body - I don't think we can get enough beneficial plant medicines for our nervous system in the world we live in.
Funnily enough, I just was reading @artemislives post about tulsi - she's also drinking it as iced tea (don't miss it, it's super informative). I went back to work for two days after writing this post, and on the third day I couldn't go back as I had a sleepless night due to an asthma flare up, so I was making mullein tea to soothe it whilst reading her post. Lo and behold, tulsi is also meant to be good for asthma! And mullein can be a sedative and help you sleep. Will the wonders of the herb world ever cease?
And will the wonders of the body never cease? I can't help but feel that my body is telling me it's too early to go back to work, and that I need more REST. Or perhaps it's a resistance to wearing a bloody face mask all day. Either way, today I am diving back into the world of rest.
What plant medicines do YOU use to encourage your body and mind to rest? You can write about them and enter them in the current Herbal Hive Challenge - there's still nearly a week to go!
With Love,
The Herbal Hive Community
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