Being with the Plants, part three

2017 Just after my birthday in mid-July, my son and I were traveling back home from a visit with my mother. There's a little farm shed on the side of the road. It's self-serve. I've always been curious about that place. I'm feeling pretty frisky since my backseat is full of birthday loot and we got an epic road-trip on the horizon. It's a pretty fly-high moment. We're coming up on the self serve shed. I have to stop this time.

       I pull off the road into the one car wide horseshoe drive in front of the farm shed. Inside there's a cooler, various non perishables for sale, a cash lockbox, a video camera aimed at the cashbox, and a very large cooler. Inside, there's several sandwich bags stuffed with fresh herbs- 2 basil, 1 curly parsley- $1 ea. I buy all three and a beautiful cabbage for $2 and a recycled plastic tub of kale for $2, which was everything in the cooler! I'm feeling like the queen of the universe with all of these beautiful vegetables, and for these prices, too.
       We're all loaded up, and my son and I are having one of our lively debates about something. I'm sitting in the driver's seat, just sort of surveying all of the good fortune, moreover *fun*, that is being experienced. I decide it's time to keep on heading home.  What could be next? I put the car into drive and accelerate slowly, just peering down the long, very long driveway down to my left, for any cars... And there She is, in a tall stand of weeds boarding the driveway-

       Motherwort. In full flower. In mid July.

A big, fluffy substantial stand of it.

It looked like this patch is mowed back from the road on occasion. Whomever must have mowed it back at just the right stage of the Motherwort's growth to send her flowering cycle out one month! It just keeps getting better. I have my tincturing supplies in the car! My son is used to this. Out he pulls the tablet again. Mom's gonna' be a while. So thankful for this experience, for the medicine for the year. Yes, we get one shot to make our medicine for the whole year, 'till the next seasonal cycle.

       A similar thing happened just last week, which is what got me starting this whole posting to begin with. Because, one the things that I just get so tickled about is my ability to ID a plant on the side of the road while I'm driving. It's so much fun to know certain Plant Folk that well. People always say, "How do you know it's that?" Well... I just do. Like spotting the Ginko leaves on the ground while I was driving through town with my son to go on errands. And I had really, really wanted to make some Ginko tincture this year for my brain. But, it had just kind of slipped out of my ideas of what would be possible for me to get done this autumn. Then, I spotted the leaves! That time I had to get the vodka while we were out. No problem! They should be harvested when they're yellow anyway. Not the most perfect looking leaves, but their vital life force energy feels intact, and I am advised that the leaves will yield a medicinally robust preparation. I'm again, so thankful and looking forward to trying it.

Ginko biloba tincture for the year's use :)

This! I Found It! The Illustration I was looking for.

November 13th

       I am SO excited! I found a GIF that illustrates exactly (well, without so much swaying as in the GIF) how I see it when a word shows itself to me as a form, how it occurs in my inner vision... You know, all that stuff that I described in the post "Fish Eye Effect". http://ursulacarrie.blogspot.com/2017/10/fish-eye-effect.html  Check it out!

I wish that I could now describe the feeling of completeness that this gives me, that I found an image to describe how I see things. I don't really feel like changing it in the post, though. I prefer to allow that moment in linear time to be what it is and was. But, funny how this didn't come up when I was looking for "bubbles" and the similar key word. I found this when I did a search for "glass shard gif". I think I found this while "off on a tangent"- you know how that goes.... Which leads me to another insight-

       I feel like those internet-search-tangents that we all get off into can really show up as the Universe's way of leading us on to significant pieces of information that we might need at that certain time to further their growth. Seriously. That's how I stumbled onto the Omega Institute's website late one night, applied for a scholarship on a whim and wound up in a weeklong workshop intensive where I found out that- I actually can- and do- channel!  Stuff like that, and like finding an image that helps me feel fuller in my Expression.

Top o' the morning to ya'

Have a nice day.

Or whatever kind of day that you want to have :)

Being with the Plants, part two

       That's what I've been tapping around-

       The plants call out to me, just when I'm not expecting it. In harvesting season, if I have decided to work with the plants that year, I am always at the ready with the vinegar, or oil or tincturing supplies in the car. Many folks have driven past me, pulled off in some spot off the road, standing at my trunk or at the hood, basket on car, herbs spread out, a bottle of vodka at the ready. "What the hell is she doing?" some of their faces say. I actually like it when they stop to ask. I get to do an impromptu herb lesson!

       For a while, it felt like I had lost my love for these things. I hadn't consciously worked with the Plants, made medicine or anything, in several years. Making a plan or a harvesting schedule or goal had already become too stressful. The paper size of "to-do list" on my clip board had been steadily shrinking over the years as well as the number if items on each page/day. What I've realized that, like with all other processes in an Earth that is steadily progressing into the energetics of Higher Creation, that any relationship that I had with the plants and with myself as an herbalist would need some room to evolve, even in my own perception. A lot of what has needed to be addressed for me, in this subject area, was my attachment to the results. Before, as an herbalist, and running with nature's schedule, if I had set my mind to harvest certain plants for their medicine, I would rigidly and doggedly go about meeting these goals. In short, I would create stress around meeting my "needs" before nature dissolved the opportunity. Life sprouts, grows, flowers, fruits, withers and dies in a cycle that goes faster than maybe some of you have realized. But many of you do :)

cleavers

       Since last year, however, when I had decided that I needed to tincture some Cleavers, and the St. Johnswort, I found a renewed aspect of my work with Intention. I Intend what Plants that I need to find, explaining and clarifying for what purpose- and I let it go. I keep my eyes peeled when I'm out driving. I keep the plant medicine really loose in the back of my mind, even keep medicine making supplies in the car for just in case, but no where near the conscious mind- except for then I was so hung up on the Motherwort. You see how that was turning out. I'm going to round that story up, soon. {One of the things that I love about my relationship with various plants for the past 22+years is that I can see them on the sides of the roads while I'm driving, even at 50Mph. When I see them, I make a note in my car journal, what road, near what landmark. I might get back to it, in the right season.}

       One day early last summer {2016}, I was driving on an infrequently travelled back road, and I passed a sprawling patch of Cleavers. I passed it, then I pulled over. There was Yarrow growing in this little meadow, too. I was looking for that too this particular year. All of the swooshes of the Universe's multidimensional wand brought me into this moment. It is wonderful when this happens. This also occurred when I let go of my desperation this past summer for more Motherwort. Thank goodness that in letting go of this attachment to finding more of this plant, I also released all of the anguish and pain of that unfulfilled need/desire. That, of course, was helpful.

       {I probably shouldn't leave his part out, because it had a funny result at first: I asked the Motherwort Deva to help me to find her. I had to amend that request, because I was, in the days soon after making that request led to a very large lush stand of Motherwort- that was heavily diseased! So, then I asked to be led to a healthy, harvestable stand of Motherwort, to make medicine for use in the coming year.}

       part three... on 11/15

Being with the Plants, part one

      

It never fails to delight me when I receive communication from the Plants. It makes sense to say that I've been fooling around with the Devic Kingdom of this planet since I was very young, in this lifetime at lease. I am certain, in uncertain terms however, that our relationship is sturdily woven into the fabric of how I experience myself as a Soul, in the long-run. The Elemental Earth Beings here are special.

       The dedicated study of plants and medicine, though, came online in my 3D experience about 23 years ago with my studies at Flynn's School of Herbology. Then, I found Robin Rose Bennett at the Open Center and was soon later told (by a friend of my godmother) about the teacher with whom I wound up staying for 13 years, Susun S. Weed. I wasn't interested at that moment. That chapter would begin some years later...

       I'll write about those years when it's safe to do so. Seriously. One thing I can say is, one of the very first phrases Susun said to me, when I got paired with her to go harvest plantain leaves for that day's workshop, "You seem to have a way with the plants. Why don't you apply for the scholarship for women of color, and come apprentice with me?" Perhaps it was somewhere in there, in that time, where I began to hear them speak and intuit their presence. I have and continue to enjoy the relationships with each Being of the Devic Kingdom/Plant Kingdom.

       So, that expressed, in the beginning of my solo practice (on my own, without my teacher) as an herbalist in the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing, I would set a harvesting schedule. This of course was in a bit of a different Time, the energetics of the world and mass-consciousness was different than it is now. And I, was a being- before soul realignment was even invented, before talk of 2012 and ascension, etc. My daily agenda was written on a legal-sized piece of paper, and that page was filled on every-other-line with a task for that day, each item which I slave-drove myself to cross off. That quality of activity was 'normal'. Now, there is a flow that imbibes all of the lovely qualities of that word.

       Here is the example which is the whole reason that I began this musing. There are certain plants, Green Allies, that I have been feeling like I need to tincture this year. Motherwort was one. Ginko was the other. I was actually a little too desperate for the Motherwort this year, as I'm in Menopause, and the night sweats had been kicking my ass earlier in the year. Motherwort, energetically as well as physically is also specifically healing and soothing  to the heart.

Motherwort

       So, of course, since I was so desperate to find Motherwort, I wasn't finding any. And it was June, already. Her flowering season is until the end of June. Depending upon the quality of the weather, you could squeak by and find some still in flower in early July, but it will only be the tippy top in flower, and that's really not enough. The flower must be amply represented in the tincture. And, for what I may require for the coming year, it is not cost effective to keep buying the preparation by the ounce in the health food store, not when I know that I could make it. {I'm currently buying Burdock root until I can locate a good first year plant, in a place where I will be able to dig it up after first frost. I've got that "put out there"...}

       June 21st. It's getting late. I'm definitely going to miss the St. Johnswort this year. Good thing I got some tinctured last year, and the old oil I made a few years back still is effective, so... I bought the vodka anyway and managed to find a tiny clumping of Motherwort on someone's unmowed section of lawn near the road. I got a tiny tincturing out of that, but I'm uncomfortable going there for more when I see cars there. I decided that I would need to live with and be thankful for what I did get. It's better than nothing. I decide to keep the basket of empty jars and the scissors and vodka in the car, though, in case I encounter another plant whose medicine we need this year... * (how I got those tinctures made, part two, on Monday 11/13)