Some of my dried herbs
One of the best parts of being an herbalist and a gardener is being able to do things myself! So in this section I have included instructions and articles on making herbal medicines and products, foraging and harvesting, and gardening.
I hope you find the information useful. If you do something awesome, please let me know!
And if you have problems or questions, please be in touch and let’s problem-solve together.
I will update this section periodically, so check back every so often. If there’s something you’d like to learn that isn’t here, let me know! I may be able to add it.
Have fun!
HERBALISM
The plants wanted me and drew me in. By the time I finished my master’s degree in English they had sturdily rooted themselves inside me. The last class I took, a writing class, resulted in a number of essays on plants, some included on this website. The only course I could go in was forward, straight into the herb garden and teaching.
I am self-taught. I have read, and made medicines and delightful messes, made crafts, made mistakes, fallen in love with dozens of plants, and fallen out of love with a few, and all the while learned as much as I could. All this I bring into my work as a shamanic herbalist, hoping that you will find the joy and healing and delight that I have found.
I share with you what I have learned about medicine-making and making other herbal products and crafts. I have figured out some of what works, and some of what doesn’t, and I present it in ways that I hope are accessible and easily understood.
GARDENING
Just as the plants have taught me much about working with them, they have taught me much about growing them.
I have learned a great deal from trial-and-error, and from reading, and talking with other gardeners.
It is a never-ending process, for which I’m glad–I will never stop learning!
Over the years I’ve become better at keeping my plants alive and having a garden that looks vaguely like a garden-albeit, one that is graced with many “wild plants”, commonly referred to as weeds.
Since I can’t always put a plant in the ground in the ideal spot, and have more plants than I have ground space for, as well as those plants that live inside, I’ve also developed some skills with container growing.
I share with you some of the things I’ve learned to do, and not to do, and hope that you will benefit from my bumbling attempts, and some glorious successes.