Imbued with Love: Lavender Rosemary Infused Vodka

This clear alcoholic drink is also easily infused with the flavor of flowers, herbs, fruits and even vegetables. Try combinations such as the light and sweet floral taste of lavender and rosemary. Lavender brings calming and healing and rosemary dispels negative spirits. Both of these are love herbs. What could be better? You’ll need the following:

• A quart bottle of vodka
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• 3 springs of lavender
• Larger canning jar with sealable lid

After you have rinsed your herbs in cool water and gently patted them dry, put them in the one-quart (32 ounce) Mason or Bell jar. Pour in vodka, making sure to cover the herbs to the top, then seal tightly. Give it a vigorous shake and place the jar in your pantry or dark closet for five days, making sure to shake at least once a day. After the second day, take a spoon and taste the vodka. If the taste suits you before the full five days are up, go ahead and strain the herbs out using cheesecloth or a paper coffee filter, Set the herbs aside and let them dry. After the vodka is thoroughly strained of any herbs or residue, pour it into a bottle; label the bottle with the date and what herbs you used. Tie the dry herbs into a bundle with string and use their aroma when you next make a fire in the hearth. Their scentful smoke will imbue your home with coziness, calm, healing and love.

Steeped in Wisdom

Different kinds of tea can combine to make a powerful concoction. A pot of your favorite grocer’s black tea can become a magical potion with the addition of a thin slice of ginger root, a pinch of dried chamomile, and the same amount of peppermint tea. This ambrosial brew can calm any storm at home or at work.

Herbal tea nourishes the soul, heals the body, and calms the mind. Try these:

• Blackberry leaf tea reduces mood swings, and it evens glucose levels, aiding in weight management. This miraculous herbal even helps circulation and such issues as inflammation and varicose veins. It is helpful to cancer patients and is believed to be a preventative.
• Cardamom is a favorite of expectant mothers everywhere as it calms nausea and morning sickness; this fragrant East Indian spice is excellent for digestion and clears and cleans your mouth and throat. Anyone who likes cinnamon will love cardamom.
• Nettle raises your energy level, boosts the immune system, and is packed with iron and vitamins.
• Fennel is awakening and uplifting and is excellent for digestion and cleansing. Fennel is also is a natural breath freshener.
• Catnip is one of the witchiest of teas; it is not only grown as fun for your feline familiar. Catnip is a gentle but potent sleep-inducer. At the first inkling of a sore throat or impending cold, drink a warm cup of catnip tea and head off to bed and you will awaken feeling much better. Catnip soothes the nervous system and can safely help get a restless child off to sleep.
• Echinacea lends an increased and consistent sense of well-being and prevents colds and flu. It is a very powerful immune booster. Take a simmered low echinacea root tea for up to two weeks at a time to jumpstart your immune system; an ounce a week of echinacea tincture will also serve if convenience is needed. (The tincture is rather medicinal tasting, so best dilute it in a cup of juice or your favorite plant-based beverage.)
• Ginger Root calms and cheers while aiding digestion, fighting nausea, and helping fend off coughs and sore throats.
• Dandelion Root grounds and centers as it provides many minerals and nutrients. This wonderful weed is also a cleanser and a wholly natural detoxifier and liver tonic

Rosemary and Thyme: A Rejuvenation Retreat

All of us get worn down due to the sheer busyness of life. Oftentimes when we feel depleted, we get a little sad, too. To rid yourself of negative emotions, try this purification bath. Draw a warm bath at noon when the sun is at its healing peak, then add the following essential oils into the water as it flows from the faucet.

• Two drops rosemary for calm
• Two drops peppermint for stimulation
• Three drops lavender for energetic cleansing
• Three drops thyme to relieve mental exhaustion

As you soak and steam, repeat this prayer four times:

Sadness, I release you—goodbye.

Fatigue, I release you—goodbye.

I greet this day anew. My life is now renewed.

Blessed be me, so mote it be.

Remedies at the Ready: Your Herbal Medicine Cabinet

I’ve found that my remedy box has grown into a cupboard over the years. I tend to study and read up on a condition and seek out the most effective and reliably recommended remedy to treat it. Most herbs, tinctures, and essential oils have more than one therapeutic use, and my knowledge has grown as a result of having some of these herbs in my cupboard. Often, the range of uses is wide; for example, lavender oil is indicated for skin conditions, respiratory and circulatory problems, nervous tension and exhaustion, coughs and colds, muscle aches, and menstrual cramps, as well as cuts. I stanched a deep cut on my toe with lavender oil recently, a new use for me, and it worked great. It’s a natural disinfectant, too! I would estimate that this cure cost me about a dime as opposed to a two-thousand-dollar trip to a crowded emergency room, with exposure to myriad viruses. It was peace of mind for pennies.

I keep a well-stocked first aid kit. Instead of expensive over-the-counter products, we use hydrogen peroxide, witch hazel, calamine lotion, aloe vera gel, and both arnica cream and calendula cream. We are ready for (almost) anything!

Creams and ointments are often expensive to buy but can be made easily at home.

Farmer’s Favorite Nettle Soup: Medieval Superfood for Modern Times

Nettles are a farmer’s favorite due to all their usefulness as a healing plant bringing good cheer and for their usefulness in breaking hexes. They are also a green that can be used as you might use kale or watercress. They were regarded and used as a “superfood” by wise women for centuries and are so packed with vitamin A and iron, and they also have a high protein count. They are best harvested when they are young in the springtime. Nevertheless, they are an excellent element in cookery year ’round and have a surprisingly delicate flavor. They are another generous genus, since they sprout up and reseed themselves as true gifts from Mother Earth. Try this old-time recipe and you will be soon be out hunting nettles in the wild so you can enjoy this medieval meal at all times.

• 2 cups rinsed nettles
• 1 cup black-eyed peas, cleaned and soaked overnight
• 3 cups vegetable stock
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 cups yellow onions, chopped
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon celery salt, salt and pepper to taste

Start cooking the presoaked black-eyed peas in a large pan with just enough water to cover them. Once they have boiled, keep them on a high simmer. Keep an eye on them while you sauté the onions and garlic to transparency in the olive oil in a skillet. Add water to the peas as needed and continue simmering them for thirty-five minutes or until the legumes have softened; then add the veggie stock or yeasty water.

Add the softened garlic and onions to the bean pot and simmer on low for twenty-five minutes. Add the nettles to the big pot and cook for a half hour. Season to taste and then share this nurturing soup. Make sure to give thanks to the guardian spirits of the earth for this gift of great greens.

An Herbalist’s Green Thumb Rules

If you have children, get them involved so they will learn a love of gardening early.

Find a nursery you like and ask which is the best book for your zone and climate to read and understand what to plant where, so you’ll have the best chance for success.

Always grow vegetables and fruits that you and your family love to eat.

Your kitchen garden should be a sunny, open spot that is easy for you to see and tend.

If possible, have an herb garden that is separate and easy to access for daily use when warm.

Check your soil type and use containers or raised beds if your soil is too poor or damp and swampy. Of course, a compost pile can fix your soil soon enough.

Preparation is everything, even with soil. Remove rocks and weeds; loosen the soil so it “breathes.”

Develop your garden’s soil by mixing in compost. Once the plants are established, serve them compost tea!

Patience is a virtue. Don’t sow too early—wait until the soil is warmed up.

Gardening Is the Key to Happiness (and It’s Easy!)

Here are the vegetables anyone can grow, from beginners to pros with their own greenhouses:

Lettuce, peas, onions, beets, potatoes, beans, and radishes.

Lettuce leaves for your salads are the easiest edible crop to grow. A few varieties will be ready to harvest in weeks! Choose a seed mix that will give you a variety of leaves for different tastes, colors, and textures. For best results, sow in stages so you don’t get loads all at once. Sow a couple of lanes every few weeks throughout the summer to ensure a continuous supply.

Once you are a pro with lettuce, grow spinach and rocket (a.k.a. arugula) for your salad bowl.

Peas are a trouble-free crop that can handle cooler weather, so you can skip the step of starting the seedlings indoors. Simply sow the seeds in the ground from March onwards and watch them thrive. The plants will need support—put in stakes or chicken wire attached to posts and occasionally wind the stems around the supports as they grow. Harvest your fresh peas from June to August—the more you pick; the more will grow.

Onions are problem free and easy to propagate. After your seedlings sprout, thin seedlings to an inch apart, and then thin again in four weeks to six inches apart. Onions are a staple for cooking, so you and your family will be grateful once you have established an onion patch in your kitchen garden.

Potatoes and beets are a high return for your labor. To me, the best way to grow both is the world’s laziest way to garden; I remember reading about it when I was ten in a book by Thalassa Crusoe, a pioneering organic gardener. I was fascinated that you could grow root vegetables without even needing to turn any soil. You can grow potatoes, yams, and so on under straw! Simply cut up mature potatoes that have “eyes” or the fleshy tubers sprouting out of the flesh of the potato, making sure each piece has an eye. This will give a new potato. After you “plant” or place the seed potatoes chunks on the ground, put loose straw over the pieces and between all the rows at least four to six inches deep. When the seed pieces start growing, your potato sprouts will emerge through the straw cover. How easy was that? Crusoe also said you could do the same under wet, shredded newspaper, but straw is more organic.

Radishes have enjoyed a new popularity thanks to Korean and Japanese cuisine. They add a fun pop of spicy, tangy flavor to soups, stews, tempura, salads, and all on their own. They can grow equally well in the ground in spring or in a pot. Radishes like a lot of sun and well-drained soil. They are also a crop you can grow in several crops per season. If you keep the soil moist, you’ll have big beautiful radishes to brighten any dish.

Green beans are the opposite of the low-maintenance beets and potatoes as they will need staking or poles for support. However, an easier path to a great crop of green beans can be to grow them in a five-gallon container. After they have gotten four or five feet long, place a pole or stake carefully in the pot and allow the bean vines to wind around. Soon you’ll have a pot of beans even grandma might recognize as a favorite vegetable for any occasion.

Grow Your Healing Garden: Herbs and Veggies

I have lived in homes where my only gardening options were containers on a deck or planters on the front stoop. This taught me you can do a lot with seed packets, pots, and an open mind. When selecting space for your kitchen garden, you can plant it in something as simple as a set of containers; this can be planned as with any other garden space. If you are lucky to have a backyard or land, I suggest you begin the designing process by incorporating all the plants you know you want to use in your health and body care, your magical workings, and your cookery and always allow yourself to experiment. Trying new veggies or seeds that are new to you can be enormously rewarding. I agree with Londoner Alys Fowler, who is one of England’s top gardeners. She says there is no earthly reason why roses and cabbages can’t go side by side and that veggies can nicely nestle in among florals. Once you have tried a few such painterly plantings, you can give yourself a free hand in your creative approach.

Lawns are very high maintenance and unless constantly mowed and manicured, can greatly reduce your home’s curb appeal. Besides wasting water and taking up a lot of time, grass in your yard doesn’t offer you anything back for all the demands it places on your time and pocketbook. Grass lawns also tempt many lawn keepers to use chemicals which are bad for all of us, especially the birds and the bees. Get creative and go at least a little wild. My next-door neighbor turned over the soil on their whole front lawn, tilled it, and planted potatoes, beets, asparagus, and squash. They love going into the front yard and harvesting fresh veggies for their daily meals. The pumpkins and other squash actually have beautiful foliage, and the flowers are stunning and edible as well. Last year, one of their crops grew to “Giant Pumpkin” size “and it became the talk of the neighborhood as we watched it grow and grow. Needless to say, they had the best jack-o-lantern on the block and some fantastic pies to boot. I am heartened to see the new gardening philosophy of growing veggies, roots stocks, herbs, and berries right beside the roses and lilies. It is gorgeous and supports the bee populations to whom we owe so much.

Gardening, even if it is only a hanging basket of cherry tomatoes and a windowsill filled with herb pots, is a way for us as human beings to live grounded in nature and connected to Mother Earth, who provides all. It will definitely add pleasure to your life and a sense of calm. When I feel stressed, I go out back and do some weeding. It is my therapy, and I can immediately see the profit of my labors. The bigger my compost pile grows with weeds, the happier I am. I intend the same for you. With your garden, you are quite literally growing a bounty of blessings.