June 16, 2026 · 9:54 pm

How to Make Healing Herbal Salve at Home

4 jars of still-hot liquid salve on a counter
Freshly made salve cooling

Many people have asked me how to make salve, so I thought I’d revisit an old post that details how to make an all purpose healing salve. The same process can be used for a simpler salve of just calendula or any infused oil.

In this salve we’ll use a blend of st john’s wort flowers, comfrey leaf, and calendula flowers.

yellow and orange flowers on a wooden table
calendula flowers are healing for the skin and the gut

Popular for its healing properties and lovely color, calendula is often an ingredient in salves. Cuts, bruises, stings, and abrasions all benefit from this herb, which stimulates blood flow to the surface of the skin. Infuse it in oil by filling a jar with the fresh flowers, covering in olive oil, and setting in the sun for a few weeks. Instructions here.

Yellow flowers with green leaves in the backdrop
St John’s wort, widely considered a weed, helps to heal the skin and is used to treat depression

Saint John’s wort is a traditional remedy for wound treatment. Known for accelerating tissue regeneration, repairing nerve damage and reducing scarring.

green leaves in the sunshine
Comfrey is mineral rich and can help heal the skin quickly

An extremely active wound healer, comfrey is rich in allantoin, which is a constituent that speeds the proliferation of new skin cells. An excellent burn remedy, it’s also used fresh as a poultice for sprains, stings, and even bone breaks.

To make the salve, create the infused oils and then combine with with beeswax:

  • 1 part st. john’s wort leaf and flower
  • 1 part comfrey leaf
  • 1 part calendula flowers
  • olive oil (or sunflower oil)
  • beeswax
jars, bottles, and a bag of beeswax gathered with measuring instruments
salve ingredients

Step 1: Place each of the herbs in a glass jar and cover with 1-2 inches of olive oil. Place in a sunny window and let infuse for 2-3 weeks (I have left mine a little longer). Strain and rebottle. label and date.

Step 2: To make the salve strain the oil. For each cup of herbal oil add 1/4 cup beeswax. heat the oil and beeswax together over very low heat to melt the beeswax. The beeswax will thicken as it cools.

a double boiler rests on an induction cook top
you can use a double boiler like this to make salve

To check for firmness do a quick consistency test: place 1 tablespoon of the mixture in the freezer for a minute or two. Check to be sure its the firmness you want; for harder salve, add more beeswax, for softer salve, add more oil.

When you are happy with the consistency of the salve remove from heat and pour into glass jars or tins. Store in a cool dry place.

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April 13, 2026 · 6:49 pm

We Begin Again

And spring has arrived in North America after our long stormy winter. Where I’m from it’s been heaps of snow, long power outages, broken trees, financial stresses.

But daffodils have emerged. Forsythia are just starting to spark. We had a whole 2 days of ceasefire. There’s a Ken Burns documentary about Henry David Thoreau that evokes a spirit of possibility and personal journey airing on PBS. So.

We begin again. Reintend. Plant seeds. Create space, find forgiveness, make grace. Forgive what didn’t quite come to be. Renew belief, renew resolve. Because a new season is arriving all full of longer days and possibility.

To that end, I planted seeds that were meant to be planted last year… or even in 2024. I’ll see if they sprout.

Some people are getting married. Some people are starting businesses. Some people are finding a spiritual space in their minds and hearts, or pivoting toward spending their days with an eye toward developing their own vision.

Still, as if winter hasn’t passed, might not pass, I keep hearing so much about what’s wrong right now. It’s true, there’s a lot that isn’t going right. But when wasn’t that true? There’s always something that is stealing the moment’s joy, or could do. You don’t have to dig far to read or hear stories that remind us of how much we have to be grateful for.

We can claim joy back if we have the courage to. Earned or unearned, we can always just take it back to ourselves. And as if to remind us, spring has returned. Again!

I once knew a person who was bound early in his life for Spain. I think just for a while. I asked him about his intention for his trip – was I asking about his career? I hadn’t meant to. His answer: ‘Same as everyone. I want to be fabulous.’

Over the years I’ve thought about his answer, its rightness, and how we say no to ourselves.

But spring has come. There’s a new moon in Aries this week. Maybe we should all say yes. Maybe we should all make a little space for being fabulous, in our own rights, just as we are. No change required.

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February 11, 2026 · 5:55 pm

Anxiety and Tension Busting Skullcap

Mint family plant in bloom with blue-purple flowers.
Skullcap is effective for relieving anxiety, calming anger, clearing the head.

Likely the most common request I’ve had for herbal support has been for the relief of anxiety and stress. Speaking for myself, stress, tension, and anxiety have been a condition for which I’ve sought an antidote over the years.

Enter Skullcap.

Skullcap is well known in herbalism as an effective relief for anxiety, stress and muscle tension, especially in the neck, shoulders, and head. Herbal Reality, an excellent source for all things herbal, also notes it is used for the relief of angry hot states and as a support in addiction withdrawl. It’s beneficial for those dealing with tension headaches or TMJ.

Taken as a tea or in tincture form, it’s a reliable way to calm the mind during the day because it does not bring on drowsiness. And combined with Passionflower, Hops, or Wild Lettuce it becomes a sleep formula, lending it’s calming and relaxing effects to the hypnotic effects of these other herbs.

In a tea it has a mild flavor, so it’s easy to add to any loose tea you are drinking or to have on its own. Native to North America, it grows readily in moist places.

It’s a good friend to have along in a dosing bottle of tincture to take the edge off on stressful days… I can personally vouch for it’s effectiveness!

Skullcap is safe for folks of all ages, is gentle, and benefits teenagers who are often anxious. The dose is 5-30 drops of tincture a day or 3-6 grams of dried leaves and flowers in a tea. You can find this delightful herb at Mountain Rose herbs or you can easily grow it in your backyard in a sunny moist spot. Take care to get the right variety – Scutellaria lateriflora – if you choose to grow it yourself!

Mint family plant in bloom with blue-purple flowers.
Skullcap, Scutellaria lateriflora and also called Mad Dog skullcap growing happily in my backyard.

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February 4, 2026 · 1:49 pm

Gut Tea For a Happier Gut and a Happier You

Gut health influences so much beyond digestion – energy, mood, immunity, brain function …. I’d go as far as saying it affects and feeds our vital force. We’ve all heard this, but so often we don’t really know how to support our gut outside of taking a supplement for our microbiome and digestive health.

Some days our gut just isn’t feeling its best. Despite that, we go on with our day, our work, school … meeting our responsibilities. In this blog I’d like to suggest gut healing tea as an opportunity to care for ourselves while continuing to soldier on, if that’s what we choose to do.

A tea that’s formulated for gut health can taste great. Ginger, fennel, peppermint … all delicious and easy to find. You can add honey, too, if you like your tea sweet. These herbs, along with others, can also be healing to the gut, support digestion, reduce inflammatory states, stimulate digestive secretion, relax and ease anxiety, support the lymphatic system, soothe and protect irritated or inflamed tissue in the stomach and gut, and even tone and strenthen the stomach. It’s a long list of benefits, isn’t it?

Some of my favorite herbs for a gut health tea follow below, with notes about their benefits. This is not an exhaustive list, the idea is that you can blend your own tea if you want to. Or just buy a fabulous blend from an organic tea maker with some of these herbs in it!

Chamomile –(Matricaria recutita) flower–warming and relaxing (nervous system and lower part of the digestive track), discourages nausea.

Catnip (Nepata cataria)– warming and relaxing (nervous system  and upper digestive track; also antacid (helps with heartburn)

Ginger root – (Zingiber officinale) –antispasmodic, discourages nausea, warming and relaxing

Plantain leaf – (Plantago major) healing to the gut

Calendula (Calendula officinalis)- healing, also supports the lymphatic system

Peppermint (Mentha piperita) leaf, carminative, discourages nausea

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) seed, supports digestions, helps dispel gas, antispasmodic, antacid, anti-inflammatory. 

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) Anti-infammatory, supports digestions, helps dispel gas, antacid, astringent. 

Marshmallow Root (Althaea officinalis) – soothing to the gut, anti-inflammatory. 

or Licorice (Glycyrrhizza glabra), soothing to the gut, tones the stomach, sweetening, harmonizes your tea blend. Helps with digestive dryness, irritation, ulcers.  [Can use up to ¼-⅓ part Licorice root in your tea.  Note Licorice increases aldosterone,which can raise blood pressure, so not recommended for those with hypertension.]

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January 25, 2026 · 8:20 pm

From High Blood Pressure to Peace: Healing with Herbal Remedies

viburnum opulus in flower
the flowers of cramp bark

Some years ago during my time as the Digital Program Manager for the New England Journal of Medicine, I developed hypertension. I was genuinely surprised; I’d had low blood pressure most of my adult life.

In retrospect there was a clue; my predecessor had been gifted a blood pressure cuff by our General Manager at her going away party. Why should I have been any different?

My physician, a wonderful, deeply practical and very knowledgeable internist, advised me my diastolic pressure was dangerously high and had to be attended to. But I didn’t want to take pharmaceutical blood pressure medicine. So we agreed I could try exercise and meditation first and return for a blood pressure check soon.

When I returned my blood pressure was not reduced. It proved to be a tenacious condition. I was busy at work, and agreed to monitor my blood pressure daily and take the meds. I did this, meditating regularly, which did help. But I maintained a high stress level despite efforts to manage it, and my blood pressure remained high, too.

Eventually I left the job, taking another job in program management. My blood pressure remained a problem throughout, no matter how much I exercised, meditated, and ate foods that supported me.

The meditation helped and I got to a new place in understanding what was happening in my mind – very powerful. But my daily life and internal dialogue were still driving my blood pressure. I think meditating more would have ultimately helped bring it down reliably, but I have not disciplined myself to a practice that regular and deep, yet.

So, finally the game-changer was an herbal formula I found in David Hoffman’s book “Medical Herbalism.” Not just the motherwort, the hawthorne, the linden, the skullcap — all very helpful and they do affect my pressure positively — but the addition of crampbark to the formula was the magic. My diastolic blood pressure finally came down into the 70s.

And I feel that the crampbark has affected my thinking and my stress level, too. I can calm my stress reaction much more effectively now that I’m working with it. Somehow it’s shifted my relationship with the narrative that causes the pressure, in the same way a conversation with a wise elder brings fresh understanding.

It’s hard to describe the relief I felt when the monitor started to show me acceptable numbers without taking the lisinipril. Peace. Freedom. Deep deep relief.

peace sign carved into the sand on a beach at low tide, sunset.
Peace created.

Everyone’s different and most people struggle with their systolic, rather than their diastolic pressure. What works for me might not work for others – perhaps unsurprisingly there are several formulas in Hoffman’s book that address blood pressure associated with a range of conditions; dealing with the root cause is always the aim and Hoffman’s formulas make clear that there are several plants that can work together to address hypertension in an individualized way.

And interestingly, if you monitor your blood pressure it’s not hard to see how it responds to your medication and your state of mind -experimentation is not hard.

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January 14, 2026 · 4:36 pm

Epilogue on Clinical and Herbal Medicine Together

Elderberries
Native to the Northern Hemisphere and a modern staple in many households, elderberries, in the form of elderberry syrup, help the body fight the flu by blocking the virus’ replication.

By way of an epilogue, the flu (Influenza A to be precise) had a short stay of about 4 days in the house, thwarted as it was by the raft of anti-flu remedies I mentioned in the last post.

For my part, I did feel it coming on but the blend of elderberry, echinacea and goldenseal capsules, and fire cider were successful – no flu days for me and I didn’t need to call on the Tamiflu. Same for Jon – he took only herbs and did not have the flu, although he had the added protection of a flu shot.

Clinicians often suggest avoiding herbs to their patients because they don’t know much (or anything) about their effects. And most herbalists don’t think the living is better through pharmacology. But there is room for both in everyone’s lives–and which to choose depends on the change you are trying to support or effect.

Wishing everyone a healthy flu season. I heartily recommend picking up some Elderberry (Sambucus) Syrup, just in case.

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January 5, 2026 · 1:01 pm

Clinical or Herbal Medicine? Both!

capsules in a capsule maker, a bowl of powdered herbs, a bag of vegan gelatin capsules
Cold care caps made in a pinch

Flu season medicine … in a house occupied by a seasoned clinician and an herbalist … amounts to a comparison of tamiflu and elderberry plus echinacea and goldenseal where the comparison is not made since occupants take BOTH. With some fire cider as a chaser.

It works out, actually. In this house the flu hasn’t lasted long. We could engage in speculation over which remedy is most effective but no one wants to hedge their bets in favor of one or the other. We just take everything we can get our hands on.

My son came home with the flu this week; we tested to him to be sure it was flu rather than covid or some other virus. Naturally we threw every remedy at it and his recovery has been speedy – particularly since he didn’t have a flu shot. But when I woke up feeling a touch of something in my throat and went to the cabinet for some elderberry syrup … it was gone. Oh, no.

a pot with a deep purple liquid in it
Elderberry syrup has a deep red-purple color

Elderberry is shown to prevent the virus from replicating in our bodies, so this morning was spent making the syrup pictured here from some dried elderberries I had on hand.

And the cold care caps… also an empty bottle. So I whipped up some of those … pictured at top. And downed a few tablespoons of fire cider. I will be looking for a prescription for tamiflu too, if I get hit by the flu bus.

This was not how I planned to spend the morning, but life happens.

Wishing everyone a flu-free January.

Part of a recipe for Elderberry syrup in a book
Rosemary Gladstar’s Elderberry syrup recipe.

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January 1, 2026 · 1:13 pm

Embracing New Beginnings in the New Year

snow covers a front yard
New Years Day snowfall on Cape Cod

I’ve heard many people say that they don’t set a New Years resolution because they view New Years as somewhat arbitrary. For me, the new solar year, begun on the solstice and beginning to evidence itself in a growing length of day by New Year’s Eve, is a moment in time for setting a new intention (or even a couple of new intentions).

The idea of seasonal medicine – that every season has its medicine – supports the idea that a new solar year is a good time for a new beginning. A time to consider what we’ll grow and nurture in ourselves and in our lives and relationships during the coming sun cycle. After all, the seed catalogs have begun to arrive!

Happy New Year to all who choose to celebrate, to those who claim a fresh beginning, and to those who just enjoy a quiet day, perhaps recovering from a night of revelry.

snow on trees
Snow covers tree tops at Killington Vermont

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December 30, 2025 · 12:31 pm

Big Little Things

This little thyme plant is a cutting from one of my garden plants. A joyful little being in my kitchen window, it gives me a warm feeling in my heart to see it there leaning toward the winter sun. It’s getting leggy and could use a trim to encourage a fuller, bushier look.

Thyme is culinary, medicinal, and ornamental. Aromatic, warming, and delicious, it’s stimulating for digestion and makes an amazing steam to treat cold and flu. Soothing, safe for adults and kids, it helps prevent respiratory infections.

And it’s adorable. Look at those precious little leaves.

It’s also easy to grow. To bring my little friend inside, I just took a snipping of one of my plants, dipped it in rooting hormone purchased at a garden center, and popped it into moist potting soil. I kept it moist in the window while it established some roots and voila! In the garden it likes a moist sunny spot.

Little things sometimes bring deep contentment.

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October 5, 2025 · 10:31 am

Who We Are

seagulls sitting in a line on a curved roof

It’s been a long and strange road since the war erupted in the middle east and we got a new president here in the US. There’s no point in commenting on the bonanza of international unrest and political commentary. There really isn’t.

I have found myself listening to both sides, listening to the middle, and trying to reconcile what I hear in public discourse with what I’m experiencing first hand talking to people. Sometimes it fits and sometimes it doesn’t.

Overwhelmingly my sense is that people want to see themselves in the people around them. They want to believe that they are accepted, and that the people around them have similar beliefs. Even if there’s no evidence of this being true, it’s an assumption I see people making as they interact with strangers and acquaintances.

And it’s good. It allows for a kind of civility between people that we don’t see in public discourse. And thank god.

I’ve come to Tampa to be with my daughter Inga through a medical procedure. She and her roommates have an apartment with a balcony. In the morning I’ve been enjoying my coffee on the balcony with the seagulls in the photo above for company… witnessing a continual flow of people and their dogs at the dog park below, people going to work, families coming and going, heron fishing in the pond, palmettos swaying in the wind — enjoying a view on this little community starting its day.

red leaves emerging from a tropical potted plant
Inga and Bella’s balcony plant

Realizing that everyone is venturing out with their unique reality and experience in their bodies has made just sitting here watching an adventure. Whatever challenges or beliefs, whatever physical circumstances they have, there’s a beauty in the sameness of everyone – even the heron – navigating life. I equate this with working with plants and learning about their medicine. They are endlessly giving of healing support, endlessly patient, individuals themselves, and they interact with each person as an individual. Mutual respect and recognition are the only real rules.

So whoever you side with, if you take a side at all in any of the many disagreements we have, we’re all in this together. It’d be nice if we led with that.

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