Mother Nature Therapy

Few things are more therapeutic than stepping barefoot through the lush and spongy soils of a flourishing garden! When the chores are done and the work finished, I love to take a deep breath, pull the large woven basket from the top of the cupboard, lose the shoes, and stroll out to the garden. It’s a relatively new garden—we’ve been creating it for only the past 3 years—with curved locust posts and a lovely locust gate. It’s a simple rectangle but we’ve tried to allow the beds to manifest a little of their own whimsy, with curves and tall stakes curling with hops vines and clematis around the posts.

Through the gate I go, basket in hand, and the wood chips we’ve spread between the raised beds are firm yet soft on my bare feet. I intend to go to the back of the garden to harvest the lettuce and spinach in the shade, but I can’t get far before I am absolutely enticed to stop at the oregano. It was such a treat to see it burst through the ground early in the spring, along with mats of purple-hued bee balm leaves and the first twirls of silvery yarrow. I pluck a little oregano and it smells so heady and strong, like a gourmet Italian pizza growing in the ground.

I gather a few oregano tips and stand, but then I really can’t get past the violets. We’ve been blessed with scores of violet plants. After moving to Martha’s Vineyard from the mountains, I missed the sweet violets and was afraid I’d lost them forever to the sandy soils and tart beach plums (which make great pungent jams) of the New England coast. But then our new garden sprouted violet after violet and I’ve been harvesting the fresh white and purple flowers and steeping them in white Chardonnay, and yesterday I strained it out and bottled it. The fragrance is mild and the color is lightly rosy, just like the wild beach roses I gathered earlier this month. Half of those petals also went into a bottle of white wine which became intensely sweet and fragrant; the other half went into honey which will be slathered on biscuits this summer for guests, and will sweeten the dark green tisanes we make from the stinging nettle that we’ll gather while wearing gloves and brandishing tongs.

Spring Garden Herbs

The garden pulls me in even further and I find myself snipping the soft tops off a hundred springy little lamb’s quarters. These are the tasty and nutritious weeds that shimmer with a light of their own and feel velvety in the hand; they are delicious raw and have a lightly nutty flavor and I often mix them with arugula, lettuce and mint for a salad. Later in the season I’ll gather the seeds from the lamb’s quarters that I let grow tall—they’ll be taller than me—and I’ll toast the seeds and sprinkle them in granola.

Just through the fence is the mugwort patch; depending on whether I want to plant something where the mugwort is growing, I will consider it a troublesome weed or a welcome guest. Simply by being lazy, I’ve let it take over the little patch of ground beneath the small apple trees and the cherry tree. I need to get in there and remove it, which will be a great opportunity to harvest the herb in order to make dream pillows. My intern Blaire has just gathered a basketful of these green-on-top-silver-on-bottom Artemisias and will make both a ceremonial smudging stick and a flower essence. 

Being a Wildcrafter

The thrill of wild-crafting, or foraging or harvesting, is partly the fresh air and the sunshine and the chance to be outdoors; the other part is getting to reconnect with old friends, to gather together (I suspect these two words spring from the same source) and catch up. I haven’t seen purslane since last fall; I’ve missed calendula terribly and I’m so happy to see the elder blossoms. I run my fingers through the soft-slick leaves of my 6-foot-tall ginkgo tree, which (so said the garden nursery man) will one day grow more than 30 feet high.

The Plantago major is one of my absolute favorites (is it politically correct to have favorites?) and its wide, deeply-veined leaves are even bigger and darker green than I remember. Just beyond the garden fence, the scent of a hundred sassafras saplings lightly perfumes the air. Gathering here with my interns, apprentices, and plant friends in the flourishing garden feels like we are having a big festive family reunion and we are all here to see how everyone is faring and marvel at how big and beautiful our families have grown.

Leaving the herbal garden, I meander with my apprentices down woodland trails that carry us over creek-jumping boardwalks and through bogs that, in the earliest spring, are filled with cold water and whorls of skunk cabbage. We harvest small handfuls of Indian Spicebush, their leaves pale green and smooth, inhaling deeply the scent of allspice, and we harvest tender leaves from elderberry, blossoms from red clover, and dozens of baby jewelweeds. 

The Magic of Plants

At some point I realize that the plants have gathered us; that they have lured us together with their appealing scents and fabulous colors and have brought all of us here to admire them, and to connect with them, and to fall in love. The plants have brought us: they’ve brought Blaire from Florida, Erica from New York, Kristina from her desk job, Cybella from California, and me from North Carolina…all here to love the red clover and boneset and wild cherry and blue toadflax and scarlet red Cardinal flower. But instead of tucking us neatly into a basket, harvesting us like prizes to display, our green friends set us loose like seedlings on the wind, to flitter about the woods and meadows of their kin and meet even more of them, to discover an even greater variety of them, and to love them even more deeply.

Smiling, we’re very grateful for this chance to smell and taste and touch the young plants that later we will gather in our baskets to brew, to bottle, to blend, and to enjoy.

 Blaire’s Mugwort Flower Essence Recipe

Blaire uses mugwort flower essence to increase telepathic abilities, release frustrations, and assimilate B vitamins.

Ingredients and Materials:

Mugwort (or any plant) flowers

Scissors

A glass or quartz bowl

Spring or distilled water

Brandy

An offering (such as a lock of hair)

Instructions

1. Clear your mind to connect with the plant. Ask the plant for permission to harvest its flowers, and listen!
2. Using scissors and not your hand, harvest a few flowers and allow them to fall directly into the bowl. Cover with water and allow to infuse in a sunny spot (for a solar essence) or in the moonlight (for a moon essence). Gems and crystals may be placed around the bowl if desired.
3. Strain the water into a bottle, filling it 75% full with the water. Fill the rest of the bottle with brandy. This is the Mother Essence. From this bottle, place 7 drops into a half-ounce bottle of water and brandy to create the medicine bottles. 

Excerpted/adapted from Taproot Magazine Issue 7 GATHER, “The Plants That Gather Us," by Holly Bellebuono