Chamomile blooms right around the height of the sun’s arc, beginning before the summer solstice in the Northeast
Thoughts of chamomile seem apropos of the moment. Calming and helpful with digestion and anxiety, chamomile is, in its small but lovely way, an antidote to the fever pitch of the news this summer.
It’s easy to grow, not picky, not overly flashy or showy; in fact its a bit ordinary. All it asks for is a sunny spot and a bit of water during a dry spell. In return it gives a profusion of cheerful blossoms all summer long that you can snip and dry for tea or put into alcohol to tincture for the same benefits. Simple, lovely.
chamomile grows alongside roses and peonies in my garden, giving me cheerful blooms all summer.
Wishing everyone a bit of sunny calm today on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.
It’s always a good time to appreciate plant world magic. It’s a reason to be cheerful or grateful that is always there, always happening. We just don’t always notice.
A couple of magical little things at work in my garden right now: Calendula pictured above, still blooming beautifully (at least until a hard frost!)
white sage in afternoon sun
White sage – not a native of this area. And in danger. But this lovely plant pictured above grew in a pot for me this year from seed. White sage is the plant people buy to smudge a new apartment. As a traditional energetic cleanser it’s been over-harvested. I’m grateful it chose to grow in my garden!
leeks, dirt still in the roots, from the vegetable garden
Leeks. We don’t think about mid November as a time for harvest but my carrots, leeks, and swiss chard are still going strong. Not interested in tempting the fates, I harvested them today. Pictured above.
Swiss chard, a spring green, loves the fall, too. Yum.
Green spirits to feed, protect, and nourish us- still afoot in the garden. At least for now. And when the snow fairies arrive to bring the fallow season, some lovelies will sleep until spring – even more magic.
Oregano, still tender and green after a summer haircut, winters over beautifully to emerge again in the spring…
basil just cut from the garden or bought in the produce section of the grocery makes delicious pesto
Basil is easy to grow. The secret is watering with some seaweed emulsion fertilizer. If you don’t garden you can pick up fresh basil or even a plant at the grocery store and make pesto fresh at home. It’s *so* much better than jarred pesto.
As to basil’s health benefits: it’s soothing to the digestive and nervous systems. It can ease gas, stomach cramps, and nausea. It can be helpful for fatigue, depression, and nervous irritability. Full of antioxidants, it’s been shown to support healthy blood sugar, heart and vascular health, immunity, and cognitive ability. A delicious food that’s great for your health – truly food as medicine.
It’s easy to make Pesto with or without nuts. For that matter, the french make something very similar, Pistou, that omits the cheese and the nuts and focuses on the garlic and the basil. So you can make this sauce in whatever way you please. Here’s a variation recipe:
a blender full of fresh basil (blanched or not, optional)
2-4 bulbs of garlic, roasted.
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 c parmesan or romano cheese
olive oil
salt and pepper.
optional – pine nuts or walnuts
Roast garlic by putting unpeeled bulbs in a toaster oven or toaster and toasting at 350 until the peels are starting to brown.
Roasting the garlic really adds a warm, nutty flavor to the pesto that I love.
To make your pesto place the basil in the blender with the roasted garlic, cheese, salt and pepper, lemon juice, and nuts, and blend away.
Delicious on pasta, toast, chicken, sandwiches, whatever… And so good for you.
This is no ordinary plant. You might say “well, Kirsti you think all plants are special,” and that’s true. But I have a real love affair going with this one.
Overwhelm is a real thing in our society. We all know the feeling of a too-long to-do list. And the overly full chest, overly heavy feeling that accompanies difficulty focusing in the face of a long list of tasks. And the anxiety that accompanies that has a way of setting in and staying.
Motherwort, pictured here, is widely used to truly calm that kind of anxiety in just such moments. A few drops of the tincture under the tongue definitely chases the feeling of overwhelm away. It’s legendary, used also in blood pressure remedies, to strengthen the cardiovascular system, and as support for premenstrual and menopause symptoms. If I had only known about it years ago, I could have eased many years of intense premenstrual cramps.
Just the other day I was out walking with a clinical herbalist, Stephan Brown, in his garden here on the cape. I’ve been taking motherwort tincture for months, originally to help with my blood pressure, I soon learned it benefits my mental state, as well.
But I have never seen the plant growing and I could not have identified it if it jumped up and slapped me in the head.
Knowing nothing about me or the remedies I favor, Stephan plucked a stem of motherwort from a nearby plant and presented it with a flourish. Herbalists and plants are both naturally psychic. There’s no getting around it.
square stems of the lamiaceae; motherwort has an especially strong stem
I went back today to gather some with his permission. A member of the mint family with the characteristic square stem of that species, you can see the shape in the picture above, making it easy to identify.
The lovely leaves are drying now, which means I can make my own bottle of tincture. Pure magic.
With so much bad news all around us, especially in Gaza, before that Ukraine, and in the middle east for so long, it’s been challenging to focus on simple things, like a garden. To the point of it feeling irrelevant and even silly to focus on such an ordinary small thing. I’ve felt guilt at not making this horrible news more central in my life. And yet, I’m not there, there is little any of us can do beyond pray, sympathize, donate, commiserate. And this beautiful planet, devastated by the blasts just as her children (us humans, animals, plants- everything) are – suffers, too. So I do the things I can do, honor the life that arises here, and try not to let anxiety prevail.
So a story about time passing here.
My 19 year old daughter Inga got a summer job at a local med spa working the front desk. She started applying for summer jobs in April, interviewed remotely, and was offered this job before her final exams started. She was thrilled. She’d worked with the software they use and had done exactly this job last summer. She was especially happy because she wants to work as an injector when she finishes school, all goodness spring from beauty as it does 😉 and so a med spa would be good experience for her.
The night before her first day of work, which was scheduled for last week, she received an email from the med spa owner saying she’d given the position to someone else who can work year-round and that Inga didn’t “need to visit.” Inga hadn’t been aware they were (still) looking for someone for the job, or that they wanted a year round person. She was crushed.
I told her (in a more confident tone than I felt) that it was early enough in the season that she would find something else, and that she was better off. Who would want to work for someone that would behave that way, anyway? She saw the reason in my words and went back to job hunting. This went on for weeks and she had very few call backs and started to feel “helpless.” Most kids had secured summer jobs in April.
Then there was an offer to interview as … a jet ski guide. I laughed. Perfect for Inga who is spirited, athletic, and adventurous, and who has vowed in past summers to someday own a jetski because she thinks they are great fun. Yesterday she was offered the job with tips into the hundreds of dollars on the busiest (long) days… a small example of how sometimes things don’t go the way we hope, want, and expect them to, but somehow they work out.
Inga last summer
And, returning to the garden.
I’ve been wandering out to my herb garden every day to see if I could spot a sign of my echinacea angustifolia. Echinacea A. is the variety of echinacea most prized for it’s infection fighting power. I’ve read it’s a little harder to cultivate than purpurea, which, admittedly, is usually pretty easy going. But there hasn’t been a sign of it germinating and I was beginning to think it won’t happen this year…
Until today!
tiny echinacea angustifolia seedling leaves poke up through the dirt
I hope and pray every day for things to come right, for healing, for the right outcomes, for people and planet to find balance, acceptance, equanimity, and well-being. May we all have a hand in creating peace and presence where and when we can, remembering to be. Not to be this or that. But just to be.
Aloe is popular. You can buy it in most garden shops, I’ve even seen it for sale at the grocery store! It’s beautiful, easy to grow, and it’s medicine! Most folks know it’s great pain relief for a sunburn, and promotes rapid healing and tissue repair. It also has the same pH as our skin, and is a natural sunscreen.
You can make aloe vera gel at home very easily:
cut a firm leaf from your plant
slice it open (on a plate is best).
Use a tablespoon to scoop out the gel.
optionally, but this is really much nicer, puree it in a blender.
Goldenseal root, Hydrastis Canadensis, is an herb endangered in North America from over harvesting, seen here emerging from the forest floor in spring
The beauty you see pictured here is Goldenseal Root. It’s the medicinal herb you often see in the herbal remedies aisle combined with echinacea in cold care formulas. Incredibly valuable medicine, it was popular with Native Americans on the East Coast of the US, and they taught us a lot of what we know about it.
My first experience with Goldenseal Root was when I was a young professional living in South Boston. I left work one Wednesday evening just before Christmas, trudged through the cold, damp winter air of Cambridge, and boarded the T to head back to my apartment – and specifically my bed – in South Boston, knowing I was getting sick. I could feel it coming on – chills, body aches, sore throat. An acquaintance at work, seeing my pasty pallor, instructed me to stop on my way home to buy echinacea and goldenseal root capsules. She swore by them and was sure it would be worth my time and money to stop at the coop for them. I took her advice, in part because I had a date the Friday following for a holiday party that I did not want to miss, and in part because I was willing to take anything that might help.
No sooner had I arrived home, herbs in hand, than the fever and chills overwhelmed me. I crawled into bed with my bottle of echinacea and goldenseal, only half believing they would help at all. I think I took between 8 and 10 of the capsules with water before falling asleep – more than the recommended dose.
All night long the fever and body aches raged, I alternated between sweats and chills. But, when I awoke the next morning, I felt miraculously better. The fever was gone.
I’d never recovered from a flu-type virus so quickly and I was convinced I was better because of the herbs.
Goldenseal contains infection-fighting alkaloids and bitters, and can be used internally or externally to fight infection. I use it in cold care capsules to fight bronchial congestion. It can be used in salves to fight skin infections, fungal infections, and athlete’s foot, in eye washes for conjunctivitis and eye infections, and as a remedy for poison ivy or poison oak.
The most potent medicine is in Goldenseal’s roots. Because this beautiful plant has so much healing power it’s been harvested in the wild to the point of becoming threatened.
Last year, I bought some of the roots from United Plant Savers, a group that is committed to preserving native North American medicinal plants, and planted them in a forested section of our backyard. No care, other than not trampeling over them or letting the chickens scratch them up (which, god bless them, they would) was taken with them. They emerged after spring rains quite independently.
Aside from wonder, the site of these baby healing plants unfurling their lovely glossy leaves evoked gratitude and deep relief. There’s hope for us, yet!
Here in the Northeast winters usually feel endless to me. This year I started early. The Cape is a little warmer owing to being on the seashore, and I have some early start herbs I’m putting in. WOOOO!
Cape cod soil is pretty much what you’d expect … sand and clay. And lots of it. So we trucked in some planting soil and started clearing away vines and debris in a sunny spot to the west of the house.
It doesn’t look like much right now but it will be full of flowering herbs this summer! And we’ve found a local fence company to put in a garden fence for us – it’ll have to be dug into the ground to protect my precious gardens from rabbits and woodchucks. Two stories come to mind whenever I think about rabbits and woodchucks decimating my garden: Peter Rabbit and Caddyshack. You wouldn’t expect those two to go together, would you??
early herbs include chamomile, echinacea angustifolia, comfrey
And importantly, our friends the garlic shoots have made an appearance:
garlic emerging from a bed of leaves
Is this garlic shoot seriously not the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?
chard and onions starting to grow in a seed starter mat.
Finally, the onions and kale I started early are coming along. I added a few leek seeds in later, to the right, and I’m waiting for those to germinate. Later this month it’ll be lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower.
I am dreaming of spring flowers and greens, and beach walks. Soon!
The fact that our gut biome greatly benefits from putting our hands in the dirt is probably one of the most meaningfully religious doctrines I know – and I have a graduate degree in religion, so I’m as serious as a heart attack about that.
I mention it here because this is about the time that I start to pare back my expectations for the year. I reserve the right to adjust my hopes back based on the amount of chicken poop and other compost I can gather! But here’s the early plan:
I plan to volunteer as a gleaner and grant writer for Farming Falmouth, too, and there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything, but again, this is a first ambitious draft.
Carrots, spinach, onions, cauliflower and (hidden) garlic in the bottom right, chamomile, beets, arugula, broccoli and radishes stop right corner, tomatoes, basil, swiss chard, beans, and calendula middle top and an assortment of winter squash top left. the middle rectangle is an imaginary patio that currently does not exist but could have our picnic table on it someday.
happy green beans in the garden
Not shown is an herb garden (bottom right, out a window to the right of the kitchen table) that will have many of my favorites – lemon balm, fennel, verbena, parsley, more chamomile (because who can have enough?), peppermint, monarch and hyssop for the pollinators (center because they are tall), some more sage, a rhubarb plant (also center), rosemary, lavender, bay leaves, lemongrass, tulsi, purple basil, asclepia for the monarda butterflies. And more flowers elsewhere including my favorite zinna and some marigolds because they just get along with everyone. The space will be big but that’s okay. Flanking this against the fence – a hedge of raspberries. What’s missing? Potatoes. We love them, we eat them, they aren’t here.
That said, we can get them at the local Pariah Farm farmstand. I welcome visitors and will gladly share what we grow.
A friend from our local farming non-profit, Farming Falmouth, turned me onto this application. It’s called SeedTime – it’s an app for planning gardens. He wanted me to evaluate it for the non-profit with an eye toward using it to plan gardens around town and … I bought it for myself. Some people can’t resist buying clothes, jewelry, and watches. This is the third online program and second piece of software I’ve purchased to play in my yard with. I know plenty of tech-savvy nature lovers, but gardeners? Not sure. Feel free to set me straight, but I think I’m pretty weird.
Anyway, the screenshot above is a pic of my developing and definitely NOT finished backyard plan. I’m grouping things that grow happily together and then matching that according to what gets planted during a given week. So, for instance, this picture above shows what’s growing in April. Later on, there will be other crops added and the crops and arrangement will change.
garlic growing in last year’s garden – scrapes are the curling pointed stalks you see here and they are delicious!
I managed to jam some garlic in before it got too cold – but I forgot to add it to my plan, so I’ll rework it to include the garlic, my rhubarb plant, and some herbs I put in the day we arrived. (Yes, I’m that attached to my plants.)
The planting – onions, early start indoors – starts in a couple of weeks! Wow! Last year I direct-seeded onions and wound up with teeny-tiny little ones. I guess now I know why! They weren’t in for long enough!
I have always ignored the days to maturity on my seed packets for three reasons. 1- I’m lazy (or too busy drinking wine while I plan the garden). 2- I am not growing for profit so I don’t *need* to know how long till maturity. I can just, you know, plant them and see what happens… and 3 – I’m not disciplined or organized enough to plan my calendar around my planting activities. I know my limits and the truth is I like to play in the dirt. I made mud cakes when I was a kid, too.
But seedtime makes it both effortless and fun to just plant things when you’re supposed to, and to actually *know* when to harvest them — It’s on a color-coded calendar! No more staring at the aerial parts and wondering if my roots are ready. It’s an epiphany.
Honestly, in all of my years working in the software industry I have appreciated A LOT about the cool things we built, but this takes the cake. And no, those guys have no idea I am writing about them in this blog.
glorious, beautiful radishes just after harvesting garden last year.
I wish they included annual herbs (herbs that won’t grow happily in the northeast) in their crops schedule. I’ll suggest it!
Backyard Botanics 