6.1.16 The old ways

     For so many years, women in my family have photographed their gardens, and saved all the photos.        When I was a kid, I couldn't quite understand it. There they would be, next to their roses. The next photograph would be the roses by themselves. Then the close-ups, from several angles. 

     Now at 63, I think I'm beginning to understand. I mean, I've had Gardens since I was 28. I rented so many houses and moved all my gardens and rocks with me. 

     Like gardeners everywhere, just taking care of the gardens filled me with joy. 

     And when I became an herbalist, that added the most incredible aspects to gardening. 

     Because here were these plants that created substances to provide for themselves , whose properties provide the same to humans and animals and other growing things . 

     So in my private practice, I began noticing exactly what plants were capable of doing. If they fit very very well for people. I began making tinctures, and then creating formulas for people, and then uniform formulas. 

     I started Gwen's Organic and Wildcrafted Herbs because, like most herbalists, I began creating formulas that worked beautifully, and needed them for my clients. So that my clients could spend less seeing me, and more on products they could use to independently increase the integrity of their health.

     I brought my children around with me as they grow up, teaching them to determine which plants to harvest and which ones to leave. To learn process the herbs, and turn them into medicine.

     When I got sick of the noncooperation of a local apothecary, with whom I did thousands of dollars of business with each month, having them

     Prepare individual formulations and my data base of formulas, I opened my own apothecary in my office, and spent time along with people I hired, to create those beautiful organic formulas, to provide those essential oil topicals to people to so easily bring microbes into balanced .

     I began using and the making flower essences , because they proved too valuable for the processes clients were going through to omit.

     Soon enough, I was struggling to raise kids, have a thriving bodywork practice, create herbal formulas and products, and run an apothecary for my clients. I was growing the herbs I was using, and ethically wildcrafting others. 

     In between that and some really severe parenting demands, it became too much. 

      And despite my priority in my practice for seeing potential problems coming down the pike, I underestimated my own self, and crashed.

     Now these days, I live this quiet life. I spend my days and nights on the foothill of a small mountain range, looking out across hills and mountains for 15 or more miles, up from the Connecticut, across land that once held native tribes.
     Still, there is wildcrafting. Still, there is the intense joy of just observing the first Bloodroot emerging in the spring, blossoming, proliferating, and then falling deeply asleep beneath the pine needles or the oak leaves.
     My own relationship as a person with a garden has changed and transformed over so many years. Out back remains my not-well-weeded herb garden, the meadowsweet now blossoming with these delicate pink sprays of flowers. 
     The Valerian root are all taller every day, their buds preparing to unfurl into the bright spring light. As numerous insects and hummingbirds await its nectar.
     The Marshmallow is low, and small, just starting out, while the skullcap has spread here and there like the mint family a belongs to, a sweet nervine for people and animals. While the Rue, a remarkable anti microbial topical , is slowly making its way up into the season.
     Years pass and times change. And on this morning, I pull into my driveway, and see the sun glistening through the wild indigo, not an herb, but just resplendent. I see the lupine shimmering in all it's blue purple loveliness.
     I've just left the farmers fields, where all the burdock is rich and enormous, the nettle about to make seed, the plantain leaves thick and luxurious.
     I remember my first fledgling experiences with herbs, recall clearly when I began to observe the before and after of their use. How confused I was that this was not a predominant healing tool in this culture. 
     How odd it was just slowly learning the politics of dominant paradigm, of repression. 
     I couldn't understand why Western medicine would ever want to keep this information from the people at large.
     Now I'm older. I am familiarized with history as long back as we can detect it. I'm familiar with western medicine, politics, the AMA, and how all of these things have impacted each other, like an uneasy pack of dogs.
     I'm more than familiar with exactly how money drives everything.
     But today, I'm just another person. 
     Wandering around my gardens. 
     Like millions before me, since the beginning of time. 
     Delighted and amazed to come upon small wild things. The Sweetfern happily growing next to the tall      Pines and shielded by the shade.
     How often we are clueless about the old ways we now engage in.