Somehow I knew, or felt I knew, even as a young child, that God would put on earth everything we would ever need to heal ourselves. I don't remember being told this or how I came to this understanding, but I was young, maybe 7 or 8. I feel that plants and other natural substances (minerals, crystals, etc) are also found near PEOPLE that they are meant to help. I landscape for a living and I've seen people with lots of inflammation with tons of plantain covering half their backyard. Or someone afraid of getting sick often having swathes of goldenrod around. I should probably take my own advice and research the chicory that spread quickly last year in my corner wild space. 😅
Isn't it interesting how sometimes we know more as children than we do as adults?? Hah, I think this journey of mine has been more about re-learning how to be a kid sometimes and tapping into that intuitive knowledge we had before the world told us otherwise. I also completely agree that these natural substances seem to appear where they are needed most. Some years I notice more self-heal popping up, or the mullein flowers more, or the yarrow sneaks into my garden beds. There are so many unspoken lessons. Best of luck working with your chicory! :)
In my walk with plants, I paid attention as a child how plants together for nature and for us. My first plant experience was when I was stung by a jellyfish at the age of 4;
I grew up at the coast of South Africa where jellyfish and blue bottles appear en masse and people are often stung out of the blue.
There’s a plant we call in Afrikaans “Bokbaai Vygie” (English: Livingstone Daisy)… You break it open and apply the jelly-like flesh to the burn caused by the sea creatures (jelly remedy for jellyfish burn)… within minutes the burn goes away and the inflammation starts disappearing.
This plant grows right on the edge of the most dry soil next to the beach and has beautiful purple / yellow / orange flowers.
Wow, thank you so much for sharing this Alani! I'm always so fascinated to learn about plants from other ecosystems, and this relationship between the Bokbaai Vygie and the jellyfish is incredible! The connections between plants and animals is clearly as wide and varied as those between plants. That is so interesting how the flesh of the plant is also jelly-like, the same as the jellyfish. Plus the fact that it grows right by the beach. I could wonder all day about how a terrestrial plant and a sea creature ended up in the same space, balancing one another out. I might just spend the rest of my life studying these relationships, hah! Thank you so much for sharing :)
Our garden is filled with goldenrod and aster now, too, but they have a third companion that fits well: boneset, which I believe is used to treat a fever.
YES Lisa our fields are filled with goldenrod, Ironweed and boneset too. I usually process the goldenrod but am now intrigued as to their friendships with each other and ridiculously excited to explore this delicious mystery further 💫
I’ve observed jewelweed growing in my yard, next to my neighbors yard where poison ivy grew. But I think my most favorite interaction to date was me stumbling upon an entire trail covered in mullein the same year my child was diagnosed with asthma. The trail has never been so heavy with mullein since that year . I definitely know it to be a message of love to us from mullein
Mullein is so generous! I completely believe certain plants pop up at particular times in our lives for a reason, even if we don't realize why at the time. I've noticed a lot of people coming into the shop these past few months looking for mullein specifically too. They come in waves I think. I also noticed that I've never seen more mullein flowers than I did this year! Maybe a sign there will be a lot of ear aches this winter, hah. So beautiful you had that experience with your daughter and mullein <3
For the past couple of years I have stepped back and completely stopped “learning” about plants and I just started to watch and listen.
In observing the plants instead of trying to know everything about them.....I feel like I have depended my relationship with my natural kin.
My favourite are the trees....and their mushroom kin.
But I have been watching Liverwort lately.....and no matter where I put it it thrives and makes the other plants around it thrive too! I’m looking forward to listening to what it has to say.....
Thanks so much for this post.....my fields are covered in goldenrod + aster right now!
I've decided that listening to plants and trees are my own form of meditation since I haven't been felt particularly called to a traditional meditation practice! There is so much that goes unspoken.
I love that you're called to the trees and mushrooms in particular. I'm always fascinated to learn what plant kingdom species people are drawn to. Liverwort, now that is interesting! I've never had the pleasure of working with that plant. I would love to know what you learn from it.
Oh Val, I love this post! I also resonate deeply with your final thoughts, unrelated to plants but related to connections... I feel like I need to get to know my substack folks better. I think most of them came from IG, but there's so many new people I don't know about, and I LOVE reading the emails in response to my missives. I have to share some prompts soon, to get it started! I don't know how easy it is to truly cultivate community here, and to be honest I don't know if that's a route I personally want to go (yup, still suffering from IG exhaustion, even a year after leaving it!).
But back to plants! For me, it's nettle and plantain too! One day, some years ago, my daughter was tiny and was keeping me company during the nettle harvest. I don't wear gloves around nettle, but she of course wanted to copy me, and didn't have the hang of it yet... Needless to say she got stung. Right next to nettle was plantain, so we made a little poultice together and she was absolutely amazed by it. And that's how, years later, she remembers that plantain and nettle go hand in hand in many ways 🙂
Cat I completely understand! I'm still on IG, I give it much less of my energy, but I still get a bit of anxiety every time I open the app hah! I'm also still learning about Substack and I think they're growing and changing as a platform too so I'm interested to see where they go with it. Even if it isn't able to simulate a traditional sort of community, I think just having these spaces to type out longer more intentional responses and communications is refreshing. We'll see where it goes!
Ah yes! I remember you telling me this story about your daughter, plantain and nettle when we did our interview a year (or maybe two?!) back! I was just thinking yesterday about the experiences that stick with us throughout childhood and into adulthood, and how much even those small interactions can affect the rest of our lives. Just the fact that she remembers these two special plants years afterward is amazing. I think it's so powerful that even though she felt pain, she learned how to heal herself with the things she had on hand. No doubt some essence of this she will take with her in other areas of life as well!
So good to hear from you my friend, and I'm loving your newsletter too!
Each of your newsletters is a feast for my eyes and mind and I thank you so much for sharing your wealth of experience! I just recently started thinking about how wild plants work in harmony with each other and I don’t have any insight yet on the this subject. I have always questioned why we have been trying to rid ourselves of “weeds” and bring in plants that don’t thrive in our area just to create a look. Dandelions are one weed I’m always shocked at the lack of respect they are given when they give so much. Another is nettles - my dad never realized how much they could help with allergies and always cursed how many he had to pull from his garden because they just grow like weeds in central Texas. I’m living along the coast in Oregon now and blackberries are just now going out of season. They grow like thorny weeds here and about a month ago the ocean air was filled with the rich sweetness of blackberries mingling with fresh Spruce tips and if I could have had a jar to savor that scent forever I’d be a lucky gal. I think discovering the local plants that thrive in an area where you live is so important and exciting. 💜
Ah if only everyone who cursed the nettles had a chance to work with their medicine! They're just so versatile, from the root to the leaf to the seed. I feel the same way about burdock, dandelion, and mullein. It's all just right there, waiting for people to notice!
And it sounds like you already have quite a bit of insight about plant relationships! I think the core of discovering these relationships is just noticing what plants grow where, and when, and with whom. Blackberries and spruce tips, mmm, that is good medicine (because not all medicine needs to be medicinal! If it feels good to the senses and the spirit, that is medicine. The way they play off each other's flavors and aromas is a dance all on its own) Try making an oxymel or infused gin with blackberries and spruce tips and you may be able to go even deeper into that relationship. If anything, it will be delicious.
I’ve noticed that when Calendula and Dill are planted together they both produce wonderfully. The Calendula without Dill nearby have a harder time. So I sprinkle their seeds together on the land.
Ooo I love this tip Emme, thank you for sharing! I usually plant my calendula all on its own, but I think next year I'll sprinkle some dill seeds in as well. I'd be interested to know if they attract similar pollinators. I'll be doing some digging into this, haha.
Just popping in to say that your newsletters always make me think. I’ve never considered how certain plants grow together. So fascinating! Now I can’t wait to go on a plant walk and look for myself.:)
Yay I'm so glad you are enjoying the newsletters!! I absolutely think we can learn so much more about a plant by learning about its relationships with the world around it too. Best of luck on your exploration :)
As always a beautiful discussion! Thank you. You have me thinking about the passionflowers and their second coming in the fall. I look forward to their gorgeously strange blossoming every summer and their fruits that signal abundance and plenty to me. And after I think they oughta be dying back they happily surprise me by sending new shoots out at the Autumn Equinox. Theirs is a special magic of regeneration and their medicine, for me, is a regeneration of my spirit.
Ah I wish passionflowers would survive here! I've been thinking of trying to grow them in containers then take them in during the winter. Passionflower is such an ethereal plant, it always was wild to me that the medicine was in the leaves and not the flower. Though maybe there's another deeper relationship within the flower that hasn't been explored yet either. I'm sure many have made essences out of them. I've also noticed this second wave of growth in some of my other plants too though. I am always surprised when my chives flower again!
Love this newsletter so so much, thank you for your always inspiring words and wisdom, Val ♡ I'm always noticing what plants grow together in the wild and how they compliment each other. There's one instance that sticks out to me, but it's not about medicine or aesthetics, just a neat observation. In my parents' woods, there's a major river that flows through. There's also a stream that meets the river, and this corner of land where the two water bodies meet seems to be a favorite spot for plants, animals, and even people; myself and our neighbors love sitting there.
Because of the way the water flows, there's an "island" only about 10 feet wide (often smaller when the river is higher), triangular-shaped, made of only rocks and sandy soil carried by the river, with the river flowing by on two sides and the stream flowing by on the other. This spring and summer, as plants grew taller and taller, I noticed just how large a variety of plants exist on this small space. Stinging nettle, forget-me-not, ladysthumb, knotweed, are only a few I was able to identify. There were twice as many plants as that. I was blown away by how many plants were growing together on this tiny island, which seemingly was made of only rocks, and otherwise looked uninhabitable. I honestly feel there's something special and spiritual about this spot; it's where the fresh mountain spring water from the stream meets the energy of the flowing river (this river is very beloved by all in our area, and the mountain is known statewide for its historic healing spring water). I feel like all these plants, crowded together on the smallest, rockiest space ever, are thriving because of the nutrients in the water or the spiritual energy. It was an amazing sight to see!
Sara, I can just picture this little island that you've so beautifully described! Finding special places like these is exactly how our ancestors saw the natural world too. These places where something specific sticks out, a deviation from the natural world around it. Whether it be a large oak tree in a clearing, a group of mushrooms forming a perfect circle, a little spring among the willows, or like this tiny island with so much biodiversity. It's like mama earth put a little something extra into spaces like these. It's almost as if these spaces draw from the world around it, like from the mountain and river that you mentioned, to create a concentrated space of abundance. So beautiful and mysterious! Thank you for sharing and for being here my friend :)
Somehow I knew, or felt I knew, even as a young child, that God would put on earth everything we would ever need to heal ourselves. I don't remember being told this or how I came to this understanding, but I was young, maybe 7 or 8. I feel that plants and other natural substances (minerals, crystals, etc) are also found near PEOPLE that they are meant to help. I landscape for a living and I've seen people with lots of inflammation with tons of plantain covering half their backyard. Or someone afraid of getting sick often having swathes of goldenrod around. I should probably take my own advice and research the chicory that spread quickly last year in my corner wild space. 😅
Isn't it interesting how sometimes we know more as children than we do as adults?? Hah, I think this journey of mine has been more about re-learning how to be a kid sometimes and tapping into that intuitive knowledge we had before the world told us otherwise. I also completely agree that these natural substances seem to appear where they are needed most. Some years I notice more self-heal popping up, or the mullein flowers more, or the yarrow sneaks into my garden beds. There are so many unspoken lessons. Best of luck working with your chicory! :)
Thank you! I'm hoping to dig some up this weekend. I looked up chicory, and it helps with digestion issues, which I have. So thankful for nature! 🙏
Gosh! I always love reading your newsletters.
In my walk with plants, I paid attention as a child how plants together for nature and for us. My first plant experience was when I was stung by a jellyfish at the age of 4;
I grew up at the coast of South Africa where jellyfish and blue bottles appear en masse and people are often stung out of the blue.
There’s a plant we call in Afrikaans “Bokbaai Vygie” (English: Livingstone Daisy)… You break it open and apply the jelly-like flesh to the burn caused by the sea creatures (jelly remedy for jellyfish burn)… within minutes the burn goes away and the inflammation starts disappearing.
This plant grows right on the edge of the most dry soil next to the beach and has beautiful purple / yellow / orange flowers.
I fell in love with plants that day!
Wow, thank you so much for sharing this Alani! I'm always so fascinated to learn about plants from other ecosystems, and this relationship between the Bokbaai Vygie and the jellyfish is incredible! The connections between plants and animals is clearly as wide and varied as those between plants. That is so interesting how the flesh of the plant is also jelly-like, the same as the jellyfish. Plus the fact that it grows right by the beach. I could wonder all day about how a terrestrial plant and a sea creature ended up in the same space, balancing one another out. I might just spend the rest of my life studying these relationships, hah! Thank you so much for sharing :)
It is fascinating and mind blowing! I love nature!
Our garden is filled with goldenrod and aster now, too, but they have a third companion that fits well: boneset, which I believe is used to treat a fever.
YES Lisa our fields are filled with goldenrod, Ironweed and boneset too. I usually process the goldenrod but am now intrigued as to their friendships with each other and ridiculously excited to explore this delicious mystery further 💫
I’ve observed jewelweed growing in my yard, next to my neighbors yard where poison ivy grew. But I think my most favorite interaction to date was me stumbling upon an entire trail covered in mullein the same year my child was diagnosed with asthma. The trail has never been so heavy with mullein since that year . I definitely know it to be a message of love to us from mullein
Mullein is so generous! I completely believe certain plants pop up at particular times in our lives for a reason, even if we don't realize why at the time. I've noticed a lot of people coming into the shop these past few months looking for mullein specifically too. They come in waves I think. I also noticed that I've never seen more mullein flowers than I did this year! Maybe a sign there will be a lot of ear aches this winter, hah. So beautiful you had that experience with your daughter and mullein <3
For the past couple of years I have stepped back and completely stopped “learning” about plants and I just started to watch and listen.
In observing the plants instead of trying to know everything about them.....I feel like I have depended my relationship with my natural kin.
My favourite are the trees....and their mushroom kin.
But I have been watching Liverwort lately.....and no matter where I put it it thrives and makes the other plants around it thrive too! I’m looking forward to listening to what it has to say.....
Thanks so much for this post.....my fields are covered in goldenrod + aster right now!
I've decided that listening to plants and trees are my own form of meditation since I haven't been felt particularly called to a traditional meditation practice! There is so much that goes unspoken.
I love that you're called to the trees and mushrooms in particular. I'm always fascinated to learn what plant kingdom species people are drawn to. Liverwort, now that is interesting! I've never had the pleasure of working with that plant. I would love to know what you learn from it.
Oh Val, I love this post! I also resonate deeply with your final thoughts, unrelated to plants but related to connections... I feel like I need to get to know my substack folks better. I think most of them came from IG, but there's so many new people I don't know about, and I LOVE reading the emails in response to my missives. I have to share some prompts soon, to get it started! I don't know how easy it is to truly cultivate community here, and to be honest I don't know if that's a route I personally want to go (yup, still suffering from IG exhaustion, even a year after leaving it!).
But back to plants! For me, it's nettle and plantain too! One day, some years ago, my daughter was tiny and was keeping me company during the nettle harvest. I don't wear gloves around nettle, but she of course wanted to copy me, and didn't have the hang of it yet... Needless to say she got stung. Right next to nettle was plantain, so we made a little poultice together and she was absolutely amazed by it. And that's how, years later, she remembers that plantain and nettle go hand in hand in many ways 🙂
Cat I completely understand! I'm still on IG, I give it much less of my energy, but I still get a bit of anxiety every time I open the app hah! I'm also still learning about Substack and I think they're growing and changing as a platform too so I'm interested to see where they go with it. Even if it isn't able to simulate a traditional sort of community, I think just having these spaces to type out longer more intentional responses and communications is refreshing. We'll see where it goes!
Ah yes! I remember you telling me this story about your daughter, plantain and nettle when we did our interview a year (or maybe two?!) back! I was just thinking yesterday about the experiences that stick with us throughout childhood and into adulthood, and how much even those small interactions can affect the rest of our lives. Just the fact that she remembers these two special plants years afterward is amazing. I think it's so powerful that even though she felt pain, she learned how to heal herself with the things she had on hand. No doubt some essence of this she will take with her in other areas of life as well!
So good to hear from you my friend, and I'm loving your newsletter too!
Each of your newsletters is a feast for my eyes and mind and I thank you so much for sharing your wealth of experience! I just recently started thinking about how wild plants work in harmony with each other and I don’t have any insight yet on the this subject. I have always questioned why we have been trying to rid ourselves of “weeds” and bring in plants that don’t thrive in our area just to create a look. Dandelions are one weed I’m always shocked at the lack of respect they are given when they give so much. Another is nettles - my dad never realized how much they could help with allergies and always cursed how many he had to pull from his garden because they just grow like weeds in central Texas. I’m living along the coast in Oregon now and blackberries are just now going out of season. They grow like thorny weeds here and about a month ago the ocean air was filled with the rich sweetness of blackberries mingling with fresh Spruce tips and if I could have had a jar to savor that scent forever I’d be a lucky gal. I think discovering the local plants that thrive in an area where you live is so important and exciting. 💜
Ah if only everyone who cursed the nettles had a chance to work with their medicine! They're just so versatile, from the root to the leaf to the seed. I feel the same way about burdock, dandelion, and mullein. It's all just right there, waiting for people to notice!
And it sounds like you already have quite a bit of insight about plant relationships! I think the core of discovering these relationships is just noticing what plants grow where, and when, and with whom. Blackberries and spruce tips, mmm, that is good medicine (because not all medicine needs to be medicinal! If it feels good to the senses and the spirit, that is medicine. The way they play off each other's flavors and aromas is a dance all on its own) Try making an oxymel or infused gin with blackberries and spruce tips and you may be able to go even deeper into that relationship. If anything, it will be delicious.
I’ve noticed that when Calendula and Dill are planted together they both produce wonderfully. The Calendula without Dill nearby have a harder time. So I sprinkle their seeds together on the land.
Ooo I love this tip Emme, thank you for sharing! I usually plant my calendula all on its own, but I think next year I'll sprinkle some dill seeds in as well. I'd be interested to know if they attract similar pollinators. I'll be doing some digging into this, haha.
Just popping in to say that your newsletters always make me think. I’ve never considered how certain plants grow together. So fascinating! Now I can’t wait to go on a plant walk and look for myself.:)
Yay I'm so glad you are enjoying the newsletters!! I absolutely think we can learn so much more about a plant by learning about its relationships with the world around it too. Best of luck on your exploration :)
As always a beautiful discussion! Thank you. You have me thinking about the passionflowers and their second coming in the fall. I look forward to their gorgeously strange blossoming every summer and their fruits that signal abundance and plenty to me. And after I think they oughta be dying back they happily surprise me by sending new shoots out at the Autumn Equinox. Theirs is a special magic of regeneration and their medicine, for me, is a regeneration of my spirit.
Ah I wish passionflowers would survive here! I've been thinking of trying to grow them in containers then take them in during the winter. Passionflower is such an ethereal plant, it always was wild to me that the medicine was in the leaves and not the flower. Though maybe there's another deeper relationship within the flower that hasn't been explored yet either. I'm sure many have made essences out of them. I've also noticed this second wave of growth in some of my other plants too though. I am always surprised when my chives flower again!
Thank you for sharing :)
Love this newsletter so so much, thank you for your always inspiring words and wisdom, Val ♡ I'm always noticing what plants grow together in the wild and how they compliment each other. There's one instance that sticks out to me, but it's not about medicine or aesthetics, just a neat observation. In my parents' woods, there's a major river that flows through. There's also a stream that meets the river, and this corner of land where the two water bodies meet seems to be a favorite spot for plants, animals, and even people; myself and our neighbors love sitting there.
Because of the way the water flows, there's an "island" only about 10 feet wide (often smaller when the river is higher), triangular-shaped, made of only rocks and sandy soil carried by the river, with the river flowing by on two sides and the stream flowing by on the other. This spring and summer, as plants grew taller and taller, I noticed just how large a variety of plants exist on this small space. Stinging nettle, forget-me-not, ladysthumb, knotweed, are only a few I was able to identify. There were twice as many plants as that. I was blown away by how many plants were growing together on this tiny island, which seemingly was made of only rocks, and otherwise looked uninhabitable. I honestly feel there's something special and spiritual about this spot; it's where the fresh mountain spring water from the stream meets the energy of the flowing river (this river is very beloved by all in our area, and the mountain is known statewide for its historic healing spring water). I feel like all these plants, crowded together on the smallest, rockiest space ever, are thriving because of the nutrients in the water or the spiritual energy. It was an amazing sight to see!
Sara, I can just picture this little island that you've so beautifully described! Finding special places like these is exactly how our ancestors saw the natural world too. These places where something specific sticks out, a deviation from the natural world around it. Whether it be a large oak tree in a clearing, a group of mushrooms forming a perfect circle, a little spring among the willows, or like this tiny island with so much biodiversity. It's like mama earth put a little something extra into spaces like these. It's almost as if these spaces draw from the world around it, like from the mountain and river that you mentioned, to create a concentrated space of abundance. So beautiful and mysterious! Thank you for sharing and for being here my friend :)