making medicine

I'm becoming infatuated with plants.  I've kind of always been interested, though I must admit my college Botany tome, Vegetation of Wisconsin, wasn't exactly juicy reading.  Luckily I've found my way to some great full color field guides and natural history writing that resonates.

Even with years of environmental education under my belt, I still consider myself a very amateur naturalist.  But I love knowing.  I like naming and understanding place.  Showy-prairie-bloomer, north-side-shady-understory-hider, dry-sandy-sun-lover.  I love how I can learn to map these residents and their habitats in my mind. 

In the past few years my interest and curiosity of plants has grown to include those plants that have medicinal qualities.  A biologist by training, I'm pulled to the science behind these plants (though my scientific mind quandaries over how we humans (over eons) found these particular medicinal plants among hundreds of thousands).  Anyway, we know by laboratory studies and empirical evidence that many plants have chemical constituents that are effective for healing.  Heck, we now make synthetic chemicals to mimic some of those same plant based constituents.  Now here is where I don't want you to get me wrong.  I like modern medicine just as much as the next gal.  My family makes plenty of trips to the local clinic and are so, so grateful for the expert care and advice (and the occasional prescription) we get there.  I don't want to live in a world without western medicine.  But, I'm a do-it-yourselfer, and I love the idea that I can make medicine from the plants I grow and harvest wild as a compliment to modern medicine.  That I can use these plants to help achieve more radiant health and well-being for my family.

In the last year I've taken some workshops to learn more about medicinal plants.  I'm such a beginner, but many medicinal plants are also food and so are safe to consume on almost any level, so that's hard to screw up.  For the others I'm gaining confidence in identification and usage.  I've really been loving these two books for recipes and background information. 

I spent much of today harvesting plants that are ripe for medicine making.  It felt good to be in my kitchen, chopping, packing, drying, and labeling remedies for the months to come.  It felt a bit like wrapping my arms around my family, even though it was just me in the kitchen.

Hope your week is healthful!