Tag Archives: leaf

November 6, 2023 · 10:16 pm

Root tinctures & weird fiction )O(

 

Merry meet all,

I was out foraging for dandelion roots this morning. The earth is carpeted by beautiful autumn leaves, colouring the earth in a resplendent mix of browns, golds, yellows, oranges and fiery reds. I just love it and the weather was warm enough for foraging. I look forward to drying the roots in my dehydrator. 

I enrolled in the Business course at the Herbal Academy. The workbook is on its way to me. I am sure I will learn a lot from the course. I have to decide what I plan to do with my herbalism training. This course will help me with that. I still have a long way to go. The Business course teaches everything on how to manage a herbal-based business. Good thing too, as I don’t have the first clue. 

My bound book is so beautiful and cool. I ordered book corner protectors from Etsy. The corner protectors have an octopus on them to represent a character from Lovecraftian fiction. Here is the link: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1253357176/the-bookworms-from-shaggai-lovecraftian?ref=yr_purchases. I can’t wait to see how amazing my book cover will look. I have plenty to look forward to here. Now I have to write more poems to fill the pages of the bound book. 

I received the copies of Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird and the Halloweenthology anthology my story is published in. Both books are designed beautifully. I have to stock up on coffee because I shall spend many happy hours perusing the fascinating pages of Weird Tales. Yes and I have those three past issues of Weird Tales magazine to read too. I love to read, I am addicted to the written word. I will invest in a nice bookmark to accompany the huge book, 100 Years of Weird Tales. That is quite the book. 

That is a lot to keep me busy reading during the dark half of the year. I attended a psychic fair yesterday. I can’t recall the last time I was at a fair. It was so good to be at a fair and even better to be around real mediums. I hung out with the wannabe toxic queen bee drama witches for so long. I really enjoyed the fair. I bought a Harry Potter wand. 

I’m brewing a jar of apple slices in rum. I hope to conjure a brew of Apple Spiced Liquor. The potion has to brew for a few more days then I can strain out the apples. I cannot wait to sample the potion. The apple slices look beautiful steeping in the rum. It will taste amazing. I added cinnamon and cloves to the mixture. The apple slices have an amber color and the rum looks like a deep deep red/ burgundy color. I can’t wait to taste it. 

I am also making a skullcap and ashwagandha tincture. I am blending the herbs in two separate jars but I will eventually blend them into one. The intention is to use the tincture  to calm myself, ease stress and help me sleep. The calendula oil is still steeping, as well as the lavender oil is still steeping and the echinacea root tincture. 

I have dried the dandelion roots and the plantain leaves and seeds. I stored the seeds, roots and leaves in jars but I left the lids off. I want the herbal goods to have a chance to fully dry to avoid mold. I waited hours for it all to dry. It takes that long. If you don’t wait that long from morning to night, everything will be moldy and ruined. It takes patience and I have to stay home all day but I enjoy drying herbs – leaves, roots, seeds, bark in my dehydrator. I do not know how I ever managed to live without it. 

Before the frost hit my garden, I spread the last of the straw mulch over the garden. The leaves now cover the garden like a thick beautiful blanket. My soil, the beneficial insects and the roots of my herbs and other plants are now well protected. I harvested the echinacea seed heads. The frost has hit my garden but I know that even though the snow falls and the garden is laid to rest, in the spring it will be born anew. 

I would love to hear about your garden preparations for winter and tincture making. The Herbal Academy is offering a course in tinctures currently. https://theherbalacademy.com/product/tincture-making-101-mini-course/ 

Blessings Spiderwitch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June 12, 2022 · 11:48 am

Garden of Life

Merry meet all,

Wow! My garden is so beautiful and lush, rich with green verdant life! I just strolled through it and wrote on a chart was growing well. I decided to make that my post. So here it is!

The witch hazel grew bigger this year. The ferns claimed lordship over the dark spot of the garden. I am letting them grow wild there, because that makes great ground cover. The hosta plants there are growing well too. I transplanted Solomon’s seal and I spied new leaves on the stems. Broad leaved dock is growing well too. The astilbe are sporting new buds and the lungwort flowered beneath the witch hazel. It was just lovely. Lungwort comes back bigger and better every year. 

The tickseed is showing lovely orange- yellow flowers. I plan to save the seeds. The purple coneflower has nice leaves so far. The lady’s mantle by the back door is growing quite nicely and showing new flowers and buds which will emerge soon. The buds of the tiger lilies are coming up. I am not sure about the Asiatic lilies. The calendula is slow but coming along, as well as the heliopsis and the red clover. The bleeding heart survived the transplant. It has grown bigger this year! The mullein is tucked in beneath the large rhubarb leaves. Dandelions are everywhere and the periwinkle is growing nicely on its own too. 

I hope my elecampane flowers this year. It’s sporting new leaf growth. Bees are busy pollinating the comfrey. I planted nasturtiums all over the garden as I do every year. They are taking off and will soon show their lovely flowers. The sage I started from seed is much bigger now and the lovage is taller. The other herbs growing well are lavender, lemon balm, chives, mint, parsley, and woodruff. Dill, oregano, chamomile, rosemary and purple sager recent newcomers to the garden. I hope the thyme comes back. I potted up the thyme, cut it back and added fresh soil. I just bought 2 pickling cucumber plants. I set them by the large box and put a plant support there. I want the nasturtiums and the cucumber plants to grow up the plant supports. 

The pumpkin plants are growing well. The rhubarb is showing off its big leaves. I added a pepper plant, tomatoes started from seed, scarlet runner beans, green beans, purple beans, potatoes, kale, winter squash and leeks. I hope all the veggies grow well. I have root veggies – radish, turnips, etc., in a box. The potatoes are growing in the large black cloth bag with beans. Beans and potatoes are companion plants and I hope that this deters the raccoons. The scarlet runner beans are germinating! The root veggies green tops are showing now. Soon I will thin them out. I just planted a chunk of ginger in the box with the root veggies. 

The haskap berries hung on to the stems during the rainstorm. They are still green. I enjoyed one purple/ blue haskap. I can’t wait to harvest more. Same goes for the strawberries. The blueberry plant is flowering. I hope the second blueberry plant flowers soon. The raspberry plants are up but not flowering yet. Soon they will. 

Every insect in creation is helping my plants grow or warring with other insects. The garden teems with life. It is so rich and lush out there. I enjoy being in my garden. It is such a stress relief. I do remember to wear insect repellent. I have to get sunscreen too. Protect yourselves, people! I look forward to hearing how your gardens are doing. Let me know in the comments below. 

Blessings, Spiderwitch

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September 30, 2021 · 12:50 pm

Autumn Herbs

Merry meet all,

Tomorrow is October 1st. I have a new rolling cart to store my multiple jars of herbs. By. herbs, I mean of course seeds, bark, leaves, flowers. I had to assemble the cart and that was a nightmare. Are you all getting ready for Samhain? I am! I am also preparing for the Materia Medica course I am taking at the Herbal Academy in addition to the Introductory Herbal course I am already taking. That does involve getting more organized, which is why I bought the cart.

I ordered seeds from a company on Etsy. They are as follows; German chamomile, black swan poppy, Scott bonnet pepper, black cumin, purple echinacea, halloween calendula, Howden pumpkin, borage, sunflower, black tar poppy, chef’s pick parsley, Larkspur, anise, purple echinacea, purple salsify, Vietnamese cilantro, and foxglove blend. Next spring, I will be having fun planting all that!  I gathered the Chinese lanterns, burdock seeds, mullein seeds, and I will soon gather the nasturtium seeds from my garden. I gathered mullein in an empty field and it also grows on the nature trail. A witch hazel grows on the trail too! 

A materia medica means healing materials. It basically means a book about herbal profiles. The profiles are called monographs. I plan to have the most amazing material media by the time I am done studying. The material media course teaches you how to complete a herbal profile. I have access to the Herbarium. I can download any herb monograph I choose to. I ordered a herb journal – titled My Herbology journal, A Green Witch Journal from Amazon. I also ordered a paper making screen deckle and mold! 

Here is the link to the journal: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08TQ7DX6J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 Several herbs that I need for the course grow on the nature trail. Goldenrod, burdock, mullein, asters, raspberry, elderberry, chokeberry, coltsfoot, queen Anne’s lace, black elderberry, staghorn sumac, creeping juniper, perennial sow thistle, red clover, and  thistle all grow on the trail. I may have already mentioned this. I have an app on my phone that helps me identify plants. If you want to forage in the wild, bring gloves to protect you, a charged cellphone that has an app for identifying plants, wear something to protect you from bug bites and poisonous plants, a water bottle to stay hydrated, and scissors. It helps to carry a big plastic bag or cloth bag to hold the herbs you gather. Don’t consume anything if you are not sure. You could make yourself sick. I want to gather goldenrod next summer to dye a piece of fabric yellow. I just want to try it. !!!

I still have to dehydrate the elderberries. I brewed a jar of elderberry, rhubarb and blueberry am.  I should added cinnamon and clove. I am making a jar of elderberry tincture. The berries were dried and I added vodka. I labeled the jar and also lined the top of the jar with natural waxed paper. The metal can’t contaminate the mixture. I can’t wait to try it. But I do want to caution: elderberries contain cyanide, so please if you make a remedy using elderberries, use black or purple berries – not green, and be careful. I will make the tincture last a long time. I don’t plan to consume it every day. The berries are not cooked for making a tincture. Some cyanide could still be present in the berries. Everything in moderation. 

I gathered herbs for my first lesson in the materia medica course. They were lemon balm, goldenrod, thyme, lavender, mint and chamomile. It grows in the garden and on the nature trail.I need to study the herbs for the courses. (What a hardship, eh?) There are so many herbs to learn about and I live in the right environment. Fall is here. Many of the plants are winding down for the long cold rest. The nature trial is now full of the thistles, queen Anne’s lace, burdock, goldenrod all going to seed. The queen Anne’s lace seedbeds resemble bird’s nests. 

I have to collect the raspberries from my garden. The tomatoes are still ripening. The pumpkin patch is growing! I have tried for 11 years to grow a pumpkin patch and now I have! Hopefully the frost will hold off! I pickled my own cucumbers. The flavour is truly divine. I stored two jars of applesauce in the freezer too. I am well stocked. I have to puree the pumpkin. So much to do, so little time. 

I am enjoying my studies at the Herbal Academy. Well obviously right? I decorate my binder with butterfly stickers, protect the notes and printouts in sheet protectors, and do my best to keep it organized. I want to be a herbalist and work in a trade that involves herbs. It will be a long road but an interesting one!!

The link to the Herbal Academy- in case you want to study there!!

https://theherbalacademy.com/my-account/?awt_a=5cXw&awt_l=Bv79G&awt_m=mUTf3FOR61wS3Xw

Blessings, Spiderwitch

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