Favorite Creative Collaborations with Plants – Spring Edition

Love is all around and at every moment we have the opportunity to act from a place of Love. Valentine’s Day is simply one 24-hour period in time where we are reminded to amplify our Love frequency within and without. Self-love, love of family/friends/community, love of the land, love of Life. Everywhere you turn there is someone and something to love, including our own inner landscape. Love every atom and inch of your being and you will know infinity.

Today I’m sharing my love with you — my love for the plants, my love for creativity, my love of discovery and curiosity. In love we slow down to experience a deeper awareness of our connections to one another. In love we see the reflection of our divinity in all around us.

So with love I put together this playlist of my favorite moments from the springtime lessons of INFUSE, a collaborative co-creation with the plants.

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Crafting Birch Staves

Kick off the springtime with the fresh-start feeling of Birch. I’ll show you how to craft a stave to use for magical purposes or to wear as an amulet.

Dandelion Blossom Tempura

Feed your spirit and body with this delicious spring delicacy that reminds us of the enduring nature of the Sun and the fleeting nature of life.

Chickweed Flower Essence

Open to presence, open to community, open to your connection to the Cosmos — these are some of the applications of Chickweed Flower Essence. Learn how to make your own in this video.

Cleavers Binding Ritual

What or whom are you attaching yourself to? What or whom are you releasing? Learn how to make a sigil to either commit to or release attachments, with the help of Cleavers.

Filé Gumbo Sassafras

Some say the way to another’s heart is through their stomach… And with heart-warming Sassafras, you’ll have even more success. Here’s one delicious way to nourish yourself and those you love. Learn more about the history of Gumbo.

Hawthorn Heal the Heart Salve

Massage and sensual touch is a pleasurable way to experience the love of someone, including your self! Craft a heart-healing herbal oil, salve, and infusion to open your heart to love.

Strength Through Challenge Meditation

Call on the spirit of Hawthorn to help you face challenging moments with love, grace, and compassion.

I’d love to hear from you! Whether you create with these plant allies or intend to, or whether you have a different way of working with and loving the plants, share in the comments below. ❤️❤️❤️

Rosemary Bath for Loving Clarity

Water is a conduit for healing. And water has memory. The waters of our body hold deeply stored emotions, and when we let them flow, we can have a healthy relationship to these emotions.

One way to get in tune with this flow is to spend time with water. Study a waterfall. Listen to the dripping of a melting icicle. Imagine being a piece of driftwood or a fallen leaf floating down a river. Get in the water!

Baths are one of my favorite restorative rituals. I start with an herbal infusion. Rosemary is a favorite! This herb is fantastic for the skin and hair, but what’s more – Rosemary is restorative. Rosemary stimulates circulation, bringing mental clarity and awakening our hearts. Like water, Rosemary helps us remember.

After I make an infusion (steep the herbs for about 20 minutes or more), I like to draw a bath as hot as I can stand. Strain said infusion into the water. Turn off all the lights. Get in the tub. Completely submerge myself in the water. And then I tone - loudly - allowing the vibration of my voice to course through the water and penetrate my cells. It is an herbal-water-sound bath. It is one of the most powerful practices I know.

Out of the darkness I allow images, messages, and sensations to arise. It’s another way of dreaming. And btw, Rosemary is also a great dream herb.

I haven’t been practicing this bath ritual much since the pandemic has kept everyone at home and I’ve had little privacy.

So instead I’ve been spending time with the ocean, swimming in the icy cold salt water. And even though Rosemary isn’t in the sea, her name means “dew of the sea.” Rosemary originally hails from the Mediterranean and is linked to Aphrodite, love goddess born from the sea. And I would say Rosemary would be connected to other ocean goddesses, too, as all oceans are one.

Mama Ocean, Goddesses of the sea, and Rosemary - they all stimulate feelings of love and of clarity - reminding us that We Are Love.

In the following short video, I share how to make a Rosemary infusion for the bath. I highly recommend it!

If you liked this video and would like to experience a deeper connection to the plant realm, you’ll love INFUSE. Doors are open for the spring season. We begin March 3 with Cleavers (Galium aparine)! Learn more and register.

The Pigs (and Pandemic) Made Me Do it

My kiddo’s little buddies, Spunky & Bubba.

Or, Compost Is Part of the Medicine.

At the beginning of the pandemic, one of the first services to be put on pause was citywide composting. I was devastated! Composting is one of those things that feels really good to do. Keeping waste out of landfills, keeping pollution-spewing fossil-fuel-consuming trucks from carting said waste to the landfills, and best of all, building the soil to support life to thrive – these are all major for being in good relationship with the Earth. I’d say if there’s one thing you could do for the planet, it would be to compost.

I caught the compost bug back in 2009 after I studied permaculture. The following year I participated in the NYC Compost Project, becoming a “master composter.” I kept a worm compost bin back then, and stored excess food scraps in the freezer, which I carted by subway from Brooklyn to Union Square Greenmarket, the nearest place I could compost on a regular basis. Not long after I joined the neighborhood community garden and was part of the compost team.

Before NYC expanded their composting program, one of the farms at the neighborhood farmers market, Evolutionary Organics, began collecting food scraps. Every Saturday, I’d bring those frozen scraps to the market just a couple of blocks away. Then came the citywide effort, also with a sizable operation at the market. I found great joy in this weekly routine of seeing people happily cart their food scraps there.

And then came the pandemic. Even though I consider compost to be an essential service, apparently the city government didn’t agree. Honestly, I felt a bit lost, and very sad to be throwing all of that precious organic material into the landfill.

It broke my heart every time I made herbal medicine – tinctures, infusions, syrups – and tossed the leftover, called the marc. When I could, I’d bring those spent herbs with me to the park to leave as offerings for the trees.

Thankfully one of our neighborhood restaurants started collecting compost scraps on Sundays, but for some reason it just never became a consistent habit to get over there. I’d say only about 1/4 to 1/3 of our scraps made it there.

And then the guinea pigs arrived.

We got Bubba & Spunky for my son’s birthday. I don’t know if you know this about guinea pigs – they are prolific poopers. They’re herbivores so their poop makes great compost. They eat a lot of grass, and they’re pretty picky about it. A lot of it ends up getting tossed with their precious pellets when we clean the cage. I couldn’t stand by and just let all of this great organic matter go to the dump. I had to start composting in earnest again.

I recalled an article in the New York Times about a way to compost at home that didn’t require a service or difficult-to-acquire inputs. I went to Natty Garden, the neighborhood garden center and got myself some coconut coir and ordered wood ash from a shop on Etsy.

Oh the satisfaction of turning food scraps, guinea pig poop, and grass into black gold! It’s really quite the alchemical process. It’s really satisfying to be a part of and witness that transformation of trash into treasure. Even more, it’s a great pleasure to partake in this regenerative process that benefits the life in the soil and beyond.

Some of the compost is already going back to the Earth. I added it as a sheet mulch layer in a native medicinal wildflower meadow that I’m working on in the Catskills. And whatever compost I’m making now will go to the struggling street trees in my neighborhood.

Composting is one of those multilayered solutions to the predicaments of our modern lives. It mitigates pollution, prevents extraction of Earth’s precious gifts, keeps material resources in the community, builds soil (a much overlooked and vital part of the health of the land, and us!), encourages vitality and diversity in the ecosystem, and brings us closer to the natural rhythms of Mama Nature that our modern lifestyles sever us from. Compost is part of the medicine we need to restore health to our world.

Am I getting too personal here? I mean, looking at someone’s discarded stuff, that’s pretty intimate!