What to do with St John’s Wort?

St John’ Wort is my ultimate summer herb. The date when my first yellow starflower opens tells me how the season fares. This year is was 21^st June, Midsummer’s Day, so although the winter was long and spring cold and late, the plants are progressing as normal. When the last seed forms in late September I know summer is over and world is turning once more.

St John’s wort was once of the first herbs I grew. Everyone talked and wrote about it, embodying it with an air of mystery. It was deemed to be very powerful, copying the pharmaceutical drugs which tackled mild to moderate depression. There was also talk of it being used to treat burns arising from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. How could a herb have such widespread action?

I knew the active part of the plant was the flower and the tiny, perforated leaves which gave it its name “perforatum”. If you couldn’t see light coming through the tiny holes, then the plant would not be particularly active (much to the dismay of those with ornamental hypericums growing in their gardens!).

My first products were the flowers infused in sunflower oil on my kitchen windowsill. Christopher Hedley taught me to use a light oil since the plant was delicate, but I know others prefer olive oil if they are looking for something which penetrates the skin more easily and has medicinal effects of its own. I leave it alone all summer, adding to the jars every day or so and topping them up as needed until I have enough oil for the coming year.

One year I put a lid on the jar, thinking to deter insects but was taught a salutary lesson when I discovered mould growing on the top. Fresh plant material contains water and if you don’t allow it to evaporate you are likely to grow something you don’t want. Now, if I were to bother with a cover, I’d fashion something out of paper or cotton.

The development of St John’s Wort oil is an amazing spectacle. After only two days the oil begins to change colour and by the end of one or two weeks, the familiar crimson oil emerges. It must have sunlight to effect the change. If you stick your jar of oil in a dark cupboard for several weeks, it will remain yellow. (Ask me how I know!)

The oil can be used in so many different ways.

• As a sunscreen
• For general burn healing
• With honey and calendula as a poultice for burns
• For massage involving any kind of nerve pain
• In a salve with calendula and chickweed for hot, infected eczema
• With meadowsweet for anti-inflammatory pain such as arthritis
• With agrimony for pain involving constriction
• As a cream with marshmallow, calendula and aloe vera to prevent diabetic foot problems

The second product I made was a tincture but macerating the flowers in vodka for three weeks in a dark place. The red colouration begins to leach out after several hours.

The tincture had me in a quandary. I don’t like to give herbs to anyone with a serious mental health problem, especially if they are under the care of professionals and may be taking other psychotropic drugs. St John’s Wort has a tendency to exacerbate the side effects of any other medication, which is not something to be recommended.

St John’s Wort is also one of the few drugs to have been extensively “researched”, although the trials are rarely with the whole plant, only with those aspects which have been extracted and standardised. Hence the long list of contra-indications and warnings which the press are so pleased to report. If you do want to educate yourself about these reports, there are lots of references in medical journals.

Like the SSRI drugs, St John’s Wort doesn’t act immediately. You need to build up a concentration in the body before you start to notice changes. Henriette Kress described it, “You won’t notice any difference when you take it but the people around you will notice you are different.”

It was Henriette who gave me the confidence to start adding St John’s Wort to my bereavement tonics. All the herbs are nerviness and help to support the adrenal gland during times of stress. I use SJW with lemon balm, vervain and nettles in the early stages of bereavement and may continue to add it to the mix or leave it out in favour of oats and/or motherwort, depending on the person. I also give people skullcap or rose elixir in separate bottles to take as and when the screaming habdabs descend.

David Winston also reported success with a mixture of SJW and lemon balm for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). This could be easily combined using tinctures but I have also made a syrup with extra lemons which proved far too delicious to be a medicine!

After several years of making oils and tinctures, I began to dry the herb for teas. A former apprentice reported great success in removing the pain of diabetic foot neuropathy in Asian elders by administering the tea as a footbath. This could also be used with any hand problems.   

My next experiment was with honey. SJW flowers in honey produces a pink honey with the characteristic SJW smell. You could use this in any drink as an added medicine to a herbal infusion. I’m now waiting for the evening primrose and bergamot to flower to make a “burns honey” together with apothecary’s rose petals. Having just treated a nasty burn on my leg, I want to be sure I’ve got a specific honey available just in case.

Every year I give away dozens of self seeded SJW plants. I believe every herb lover needs an SJW patch in their garden. I know I would be lost without mine.

I'll finish with a meditation I undertook recently with St John's Wort. This is what he said.

I am the sun and stars
I am strong
I travel along unseen pathways
I hide my scent
You will only know it if you work with me.
The more you work with me the less you will understand me
I comfort the vulnerable
Do not think to offer me on my own
I am not here to work your miracles
You will not notice how I change you until the change is past
Offer me humbly to your elders
On your knees let them bathe their feet in my waters
I will take away their pain, soothe the burning
I am strong

Trust me

Another gift from violet

Violet was my first herbal ally. Prompted by the wealth of violet flowers in my own garden this year, I was drawn to making a violet flower essence during the April workshop at the Sanctuary. The weather was glorious, warm with almost constant sunshine, perfect conditions for making a flower essence.

Purple violets grow sparsely underneath the crabapple tree in front of the summerhouse where we planted them during the seventies. I’ve found scentless dog violets near the ancient willow tree and last year I noticed some new sweet violets growing in the middle of the daffodils.as if seeking a better home than their original shaded site.

When I went to search for flowers, all the purple ones were over. This was a disappointment but I thought to myself that if I were supposed to make a flower essence then the Sanctuary would provide the means. Sure enough, when I searched amongst the bank of daffodils, there was a group of white violets.

Until that moment, I had never seen a wild white violet in my life, yet here they were waiting for me to collect them to create an essence.

White violet was one of Dr Bach’s original flowers. It is thought to offer energetic healing to those who are uncomfortable in closed spaces and constrained environments; fearful of losing their own identity in a group; unable to embody their sensitivity in a comfortable way. The essence helps build trust in the protection of the Higher Self and benevolent spiritual forces; to help those who are highly sensitive or acutely aware of their surroundings maintain a strong sense of self regardless of the dynamics of their environment.

On such a beautiful spring day it seemed the ideal gift for me as my development has felt dry and dusty while my parents needed my support. White violet seemed the perfect flower to use on an adventure of inner spiritual journey.

The flowers were placed on the top of a jam jar of spring water and left to infuse for three hours. An amount was then mixed with an equal amount of brandy to form the mother essence.

When I held the infused liquid up to the sun, it had a turquoise tinge. On tasting it, there appeared to be no discernible taste or scent but after a few moments a definite flavour of scented violets appeared on the sides of my tongue, bringing back memories of sucking my grandmother’s violet pastilles as we lay together on the sitting room sofa for an afternoon nap when I was a very young child. I was never very fond of the violet sweets; I much preferred “iodines”!

Later that night, alone in bed, I concentrated on the white violet plant, apologising for using so many of the flowers to make the essence. I heard a very cross response.

“Do you think we would have shown ourselves if we hadn’t wanted to be used? If that hadn’t been our intention, we would have hidden amongst the grasses and you would never have seen us.” I felt suitably chastened.

 I decided to meditate using a dropperful of flower essence every day for a week to see how the interaction with the white violet essence would develop. I haven’t meditated outside the monthly world healing sessions for several years. It seemed a good opportunity and the perfect helper to reconnect.

Day 1

Unlike previous occasions, no energy flowed through my hands but I did feel the usual tingle around the back of my head which I associate with a protective spirit presence. Although I couldn’t taste the scented violet because of the brandy mask, the receptors on the sides of my tongue were again activated.

In my mind’s eye, I saw pink which turned to red which became tinged with yellow which became the deep yellow/orange of the violet’s centre. The final colour was white. I associate pink with love.

The “messages” given me were

• The greatest protection is love
• Stop trying so hard
• White is the most important colour

Day 2

I took the flower essence at 7pm prior to the world healing session at 7.40pm when I was joined by four of my fellow healers. I saw white. I felt two pyramidal cones of energy (normally I feel spirals) through my hands which were initially upright. The right hand stayed upright while the left hand cone went horizontal pointing to my right through the wall for most of the session.

Messages received were

• Don’t try, let it flow through you
• Look to the core.

In the subsequent discussion we talked about the colours of energies. One of our members had been to a recent conference and learned some recently channelled information about the colours of energies. Orange was the colour of nuclear energy, i.e. the energy in the nucleus of cells which is the colour of the centre of the white violet.

We also talked about passed lives, parallel universes and how choices we make cause universal splits at the point of choice.

I’ve never been successful in gaining information about any of my past lives so my friend suggested doing a visualisation with the intention, “Show me those past lives useful to me now.”

Day 3

I saw green which became a white dandelion clock which became pink.

Messages

• This is for you alone
• Who am I?
• Learning about self

The pink colour turned lilac then purple then back to pink. I saw different flower shapes – primrose, dahlias and chrysanthemums  Those shapes inspired me to choose a flower spirit card – Nomodiaris, a plant I’d never seen before. This gave me the phrase “I experience freedom by becoming aware and having compassion.”

Day 4

Message: How can you access magic if you’re not grounded?

Day 5

Message: You need to focus if you’re going to achieve anyting.

As my mind was constantly flitting everywhere during this meditation, I missed the following day until life calmed down a little.

Day 7

Messages:

• Yes, this exercise is like raking the debris from the top of the soil. You can see the soil underneath waiting to be used but you need to clear the detritus off first before you start working it
• Everyone has stories
• Everyone has tears
• Everyone has memories
• The important thing is to remember
•  At the centre, the core is the pink of love. It may look fragile and ethereal but it is always there.
• Your guides are always with you.

Finding time to meditate has always been difficult for me but this week held none of the usual frustrations. Each meditation lasted no more than fifteen minutes yet it always felt long enough.

The messages and images were all very personal rather than something to share with mankind. It is the first step along a continuing pathway after a long period of standing still not knowing where to go next.

I am very grateful for white violet’s gift of direction.

May blog party : Flower essences, Call for submissions

This month's UK Herbarium blog party features flower essences.

What are they? How do you make them? What do they mean to you? The aim of this set of posts is to discover how you relate or don't relate to flower essences. How do you learn the energetic property of the plant? Do you read a book, discover an internet article or ask the plant to tell you? How do you use the finished essence? Do you use the original infusion or do you use a homeopathic dilution? Have you noticed any difference? What do you use flower essences for? What are your stories? Can you share them with us, no matter how strange or bizarre.

Please let me know if you wish to take part in the blog party (the more the merrier). Once you've written your blog post, send me the link to the article by email at sarah at headology dot co dot uk by 20 May. I know there isn't much time, but this month is proving frantically busy both on a work and gardening front for me, so please bear with me.

If you don't have a blog, but would like to write an article, let me know and we'll arrange a host blog for your post. I look forward to reading everyone's thoughts.

Searching for lions in winter

Many people know dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) but few go hunting for it across fields in January. Standing in the middle of an empty five acres, gardening fork in one hand and a yellow washing up bowl in the other, I must have looked a strange sight to passing motorists or horse-riders trotting wearily home after a day’s hunting. Bitter wind sweeping down over the Cotswold hills made my eyes water, so I could hardly see and bending down made my nose run, necessitating the application of tissues every five minutes!

Luckily the ground was not frozen, nor was the soil too wet to release the dandelion roots when I found them. “Gather second year roots,” says Linda Ours Rago in her book, “Blackberry Cove Herbal: Healing with Common Herbs in the Appalachian Wise Woman Tradition”, but she doesn’t say how to recognise the difference between first, second or older roots by the crown of new leaves appearing on the surface.

What I discovered was that smaller roots seemed to have more leaves and thicker roots were only just sprouting a dark, green array. The thicker taproots are not like carrots, they are actually the product of several small roots – often from more than one plant- twisting around each other to reach up to half and inch diameter, but with a hollow centre.

It’s often easier to identify the roots once you have tipped the clod of earth upside down. The white root sap will gleam at you from the darkness of the soil, enabling you to almost “crack the clod open” to reveal the root in all its glory – no matter how small it is!

I love roots. I don’t enjoy digging them, especially not on my own, but there is a real sense of achievement and worthwhile effort when you’ve finished all the scrubbing and other preparation and the jar of new tincture is sitting on the table waiting to be put away to macerate.

I washed the roots, scrubbing them furiously before swilling in several changes of water. After that I cut them into small sections less than an inch long and about 1/4inch thick and put them on trays to dry in the fire oven for several hours. They came out very crisp but the leaves didn’t disintegrate on touch, which I would have expected if they had dried too long.

Normally I wouldn’t bother drying them, but they were so wet and my harvest was only half of what Chris and I gathered last year, so I decided to concentrate everything to try and extract the maximum amounts in vodka. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Seeing the crispness of the roots made me want to create a dandelion root chai with other spices. Unfortunately my coffee grinder isn’t working at the moment, so I shall have to wait until I gather my next batch of roots to try this out.

It seems only right that dandelion’s Latin name comes from Greek words 'taraxos' (disorder) and 'akos' (remedy), echoing the many centuries dandelions have been helping people. Its English name is derived from the French “dents de lion” meaning lion’s tooth referring to the serrated edge of the leaves. Of course the French have their own word for the plant – Pissenlit – which eloquently describes its diuretic nature.

There are so many different uses and recipes for dandelions. Brigitte Mars has written a wonderful little book called “Dandelion Medicine”. It’s out of print, but still available from the US. She provides a cornucopia of ideas from nourishing soups, fritters and pancakes to cosmetic uses of dandelions.

I played with dandelions a lot during 2008. She was a real ally in helping my body return to a state of balance where my ankles no longer swelled if I sat at my desk all day or stood in front of a group of people during one of my workshops.

The root is historically ally to the liver and Christopher Hedley recommends it for any digestive problems or long term treatment of gall-stones. When my hairdresser was complaining of digestive upsets several years ago, I recommended she try some dandelion tea. I warned her about the bitter taste, but she said she loved it!

Dandelion leaves support the kidneys and bring real excitement to any salad especially when coupled with sorrel leaves! The leaves are best picked before the plant flowers or they can become too bitter afterwards. I remember picking leaves in driving sleet last March, which not only shows how appalling our Easter weather was, but also how desperate I was to gather my own medicine and not be reliant on store-bought produce. Even when the leaves were dried, they still retained a more vibrant colour than the bought dandelion leaves.

My salads are never measured or weighed, but my friend, Debs Cook from The Herb Society produced a delightful dandelion salad and soup when she appeared last year in Countryfile on BBC1 last April. You can find the recipes here.

One of the new dandelion parts I played with last year was dandelion flower. We made the essence during a workshop in May. I thought the flower essence was for happiness, but I was delighted to see a wonderful story given in Matt Woods’ book, “The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism” where an eight year old girl, who was being thoroughly obnoxious to her entire family, completely changed her nature when given a few drops of dandelion flower essence. Unfortunately I didn’t keep any of the flower remedy after the workshop but I shall be making some more this year to offer to harassed parents!

It was dandelion syrup which really turned Chris onto herbal products. I made two batches last Spring. We poured it over porridge for breakfast and Chris decided it made a really nice addition to his mid-morning coffee while I was away at work. I used Non Shaw and Christopher Hedley’s basic recipe for making syrups, inspired by Henriette’s eulogy about dandelion syrup in her blog.

I also made some dandelion flower salve. The sunshine yellow oil makes everyone smile! I was so glad I did, because one lady who came to my workshops had recently had a double mastectomy and she found the salve really helpful in soothing her scar tissue.

I have often thought you cannot really claim to know a plant until you have gathered and used every part of them. Although I have shared many experiences with dandelion, I suspect there are many more secrets she has yet to reveal!

Honouring the Ants

In three days time I shall be journeying skywards to the hopefully sunnier climes of West Coast USA. It is nearly seven years since I last visited Oregon and thirteen years since I last set foot upon Californian soil. It will be good to be going back and smelling the eucalyptus trees again and hearing the thunder of the Pacific Ocean.

So much to do and so little time to do it! After the emotional turmoil of my parents’ frailty and trying to do something to celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary and my mother’s 80th birthday, all I could think about was processing the last of my herbs just in case something dreadful happened to them while I was away.

It struck me, as I was sitting on the patio last Saturday nursing my aching back and diligently transferring dried herbs into glass jars, that I don’t have free weekends. If I’m at home and not committed to public healing or doing some writing, I’m decanting tinctures or vinegars or sorting out dried herbs or making oils or syrups. I made a huge issue last year that it had taken me a whole day in October to process the dried calendula and all the other dried herbs, yet this year I must have dedicated at least three entire weekends to herbal products, not to mention the countless evenings after work cooking double infused oils or finishing off syrup evaporations before adding the honey or sugar.

I’m a terrible one for lists. I make notes of how many words I’ve written per story or story segment and how long it’s taken me to write them. Somehow I find it comforting to notice that a story which was only 5,000 words a few months ago has now expanded to 25,000 and if I add up other portions of each character’s tale, I might have enough for a book if I can just find the time to finish it!

I’ve started doing the same with herbs. Not content with keeping a herbal diary this year, I’ve now put together a spreadsheet to show what I’ve done with each herb. So far this year, out of 85 different plants I have dried 43, made 24 different double infused oils and one sun-infused oil, 33 different tinctures, 14 infused vinegars, 3 infused honeys, and 7 combination syrups. I haven’t made any flower essences for myself, but people who have attended workshops have made 13 different kinds of flower remedy. It’s no wonder there is no room in my larder for food, most of the shelves are completely taken over by herbal products!

If you are thinking of harvesting and storing your herbs, here are some hints and tips to help you make the most of them.

Harvesting
Pick your herbs after the dew has gone from them and before the midday sun has stressed them. Some herbs need to be picked before they flower e.g. lemon balm, mint, while others need to be picked when they flower e.g. boneset, motherwort. Others can be picked whenever you need them such as comfrey, marshmallow, plantain. (see tables)

Drying
Drying is possibly the easiest way to preserve herbs either to keep throughout the winter or until you decided what you would like to do with your harvest. Drying takes some thought and preparation to achieve the best results.

If you have a warm airy room away from the light, you can hang your herbs up in small bunches until they are dry and leave them as intact as you can for as long as you can. If you have a spare bedroom, both the bed and the floor space can be utilised for laying out your herbs on sheets of newspaper or an old cotton sheet. Cover them with another sheet or newspaper and leave until dry.

If you have a warm space to hang your herbs but you can’t keep out the light, put your herbs inside a paper bag and hang the bag up. If you are drying lavender or any other plant which is likely to shed seeds once dried e.g. heartsease, it is much easier to dry it inside a paper bag rather than have the seeds or heads fall off so you lose a significant part of your harvest.

If your herbs might contain moisture e.g. elderflowers, it is much better to dry them flat and separate on a sheet of paper, rather than altogether in a paper bag where mould may grow. It is heartbreaking to lose your entire harvest because it has grown mouldy.

Never be tempted to pick leaves which have even a touch of mildew on them. The mildew will grow during the drying process and your harvest will be worthless.

Some people buy a purpose built desiccators or make one. These can be used to dry fruit as well as herbs.

There will be times when the herbs you pick are wet. You will then need to decide whether you air dry them, by laying them flat somewhere or put them next to or in a heat source. Always try to use the lowest heat setting you can. You are aiming to dry the herbs, not cook them.

If you are collecting seeds, it is worth spending the extra time preparing them properly. Haws can be dried whole. Nettle seeds should be either hung up in bunches whilst still on the stems or laid flat on newspaper. Rosehips should be split in half and the seeds and pitch removed before drying. NB The insides of rosehips are irritating to the skin and used to be used as itching powder!

Both hips and haws need a heat source to dry properly unless you are living in hot country. If you have a hot water tank or a cupboard where hot water pipes run through or radiators which warm up regularly, you can place the seeds there. Leave for a month or more before you remove them to see if they are properly dry.

Roots need to be thoroughly washed (i.e. scrub with a scrubbing brush, wash, scrub and wash again) and cut into 1” sections before drying. If the root is thick, cut it in half. Roots are probably best dried in the bottom of the oven on the lowest heat setting or pilot light, ensuring air can circulate all round them. Leave the oven door slightly open during the drying to allow the moisture to escape. Dry as slowly as you can and turn everything over from time to time to ensure evenness.

Storing
To make sure your herbs keep their “strength”, they should be stored in a cool, dark place in bottles or jars with screwtop lids. Ideally brown or green glass would be the most preferable, but since most jars are clear glass, you can overcome the problems of light by placing the jar inside a paper bag once it is full. This ensures the herb stays colourful and potent for up to a year and sometimes more.

If you have picked and dried the whole aerial part of the plant, you may need to remove the leaves and/or flowers from the main stem, since this might not be as dry as the other parts. Try to keep everything as whole as you can. Once you have crushed a leaf, all its aromatic oils will be lost and so will its efficacy.

Herbs with a great deal of moisture/resin take a while to dry (at least one month). Calendula flower heads are best dried whole, but the only part which is kept are the petals. Each petal has to be plucked from the centre and then stored in a glass jar. If exposed to the light, they will lose their colour very quickly, but if encased in a paper bag, they will still be vibrantly orange twelve months later.

Nettle seeds are best removed from the stem by passing through a metal sieves. This ensures you only get the seed and not the leaves or any other dried inhabitants.

Make sure your jars are labelled and dated correctly. Despite your best intentions, you may not be able to remember which leaf or flower was which and if you don’t have the correct date on it, you will not know whether the herb is 6 months or 18 months old.

Freezing
Some herbs such as lemon balm, St Johns wort and tarragon, have a very short shelf life when dried. It can be easier to store them by freezing the plants fresh from the garden rather than drying them. This also applies to cleavers, shepherds purse, chickweed and possibly heartsease. All these herbs lose vitality once they are dried and should be tinctured or infused into oil when they are fresh.

Place the fresh herb into a plastic freezer bag, remove the air and freeze until needed. If you want the herbs specifically for tea, you can chop the herbs (either by hand or in a coffee grinder), make the tea with less water than usual but do not strain out the herbal matter and then freeze the liquid in ice cube trays. This is an especially good way of making fresh mint sauce in the middle of winter!

Rotating your stock
Once you start keeping your own herbal supplies, you will need to monitor everything on a regular basis. If you use what you have harvested, the dried herbs will disappear, but if you have collected some “just in case” and you haven’t given it away to friends, family or passing salesmen, it will sit there until you decide to do something about it.

Most herbs, properly dried, will keep for at least twelve months and can be replaced by next year’s harvest. If you don’t gather that herb the next year for some reason then sometimes you can keep using the old stock, but use double quantities. Unless you have real need for a dried herb which is more than twelve months old, throw it out and compost it or give it to your local re-enactment society so they can have real herbs in their apothecary’s booth. Once a herb loses its colour or develops mould, remove it.

The wonderful thing about collecting your own herbal stock is that the herbs you need will be there when you want them. They will be better quality than those you can buy and they will be better for you because they have grown in the same environment in which you live.

Waving for a reason!

When Ananda suggested the topic of plant divas and energetic connections with plants for the April Herbwifery Forum blog party, I knew I wanted to be involved. The only problem was not having a blog. This prevented me from participating in the nettle party in March, so I really didn’t want to miss out again!

So, a new month, a new blog and some thoughts about my relationships with the plants I work with. I suspect they would say the relationship is very one sided – they do all the work, I just come along and smile at them or harvest them and very occasionally pass the odd comment while I’m nearby. I’m very bad at making time to be quiet, alone and do nothing else but pay attention.

Occasionally they take me to task, shouting their message until even I am forced to listen and take action. Here are a couple of stories about messages I’ve received.

I’m very fortunate to have been given some land to grow my herbs. It’s a small glade at the bottom of a field in the Cotswolds. You can see what I do there on http://www.springfieldsanctuary.co.uk/ . About two years ago, when times were particularly stressful, I’d gone for an energy field healing from a friend. She gave me some Goddess cards to work with, which seemed helpful. It gave me the idea of dedicating the Sanctuary to a particular Goddess.

I wasn’t sure which one to choose, so I thought I would ask the Sanctuary itself. It was a glorious, hot summer day and for a short while I was on my own. I lay down on the warm, dry soil and asked my question. The answer I received was couched in a somewhat ironic chuckle. “There is no need for an identified Goddess; this whole place is nematon – sacred space.” I realised I should have known this all along – it was not for me to force my will on a place, but to respect what was already here.

The first plant to draw my attention was yarrow (Achillea millefolium). He and I go back a long way – a plant of my childhood which was always there during the summer. The first year I grew herbs in the sanctuary there was a group of wild yarrow growing by the fence. It was not really large enough to meet all my needs so I bought some fresh plants to grow and put them in one of the herb beds. For several years the new plants were nowhere near as strong as the wild one, but gradually they became acclimatised to the limestone soil and their taste became the same.

I found yarrow in other places too – especially when I needed him. In 2002, I was visiting a friend in hospital who was dying of metastised oesophageal cancer. When I left, I kissed him goodbye on his forehead. The acrid taste of his sweat filled my mouth and I didn’t know what to do. By the side of the steps leading down to the car park was some yarrow leaves. I picked and chewed them and the taste of death left me. I suppose, as a battlefield herb, yarrow knows a lot about death.

Three years ago, another friend was involved in a fatal road accident. I was beside myself with worry and the fear lodged in my solar plexus as a deep, physical pain. A wild yarrow was growing in the cracks in our patio. I brushed past it every time I went outside into the garden. At the same time I was putting together a handout on the energetic use of herbs for a workshop I was running on flower essences. Part of my research led me to Karin Saunders 17 June 2004 radio show where she talked about yarrow strengthening personal boundaries so you knew where you started and someone else ended. This tied up with things Matt Woods mentioned in his discussion about yarrow.

While everyone else was choosing their flower to make a flower essence, I went to my yarrow patch and picked enough flowers to float over the top of my glass of spring water. We talked about what flowers we’d chosen and how they might help us.

The following Monday morning I took my yarrow flower essence into work and added four drops to my water glass because the pain was still troubling me. Within half an hour the pain had gone. I continued taking the flower essence for the next three days, but the pain did not return.

When I got home that Monday night, I went out into the garden and talked to the yarrow growing by the back door. I knew how much he had tried to show me he could help in a difficult situation but it had taken me a long time to realise why he kept drawing my attention. I told him how grateful I was he persevered.

References
Sanders, K “The Spiritual Properites of Herbs” on Herbal Highways June 17 2004 http://www.kpfa.org/archives/archives.php?id=15&limit=N

Wood, M The Book of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicines