The first natural medicine I recall growing and using is probably the Aloe Vera plant. While my mom grew all manner of succulents to surround our patio creek side in Norfolk, Virginia, once we moved North the only plant related to them that I recall seeing is the aloe, and it didn’t live outside in Michigan…it lived on the top of the refrigerator.
I never really noticed this plant until I burnt myself while cooking. Or did I cut myself? Whatever…the matter, it was conveniently placed in the kitchen, so my mom deftly snipped a piece off and placed its cooling gel-end on my finger. Instantaneous pain relief.
Aside from that gratuitous experience, I cannot recall many more homemade medicine events until many years later, when I left for college and many of my friends got into drinking herbal tea….it was probably because it was cheaper than coffee or even black tea, in the realm of Ramen. But a pot of tea, with its odd twigs and simmering leaves and aromas, was calming to me, and even when I had nothing else to offer, I could usually find some mint or Celestial Seasonings™ enough to pull together a pot of tea.
Around then, some family members who traveled to Jamaica and returned with their own homemade roots tea and stories of just sauntering outside to snip lemongrass which grew abundantly outside the doorstep. I had a revelation: we had a postage stamp side yard, but truly it was enough for a few pots of herbs that, at that point, I could apply in broader applications of healing.
My neighbor Elaine that lived across the alley shared cuttings and plants that she processed with me, as well as books that inspired me enough that I began to believe that even my brown thumb could become green with patience and practice.
A birthday brought gifts of several types f mint chocolate and lemon among them, as well as oregano, and even a real curry plant. (Yes, I know “curry” is actually a blend of spices, but this plant exists and tastes quite similar). Soon, my cooking was spiced with homegrown greenery, and the regular harvest of my deck-grown herbs made them bushy, healthy, and well-appreciated.
I had little time with two babies always keeping me moving, but I relished tending my portable garden of pots full of medicine and watered, picked at, and moved them around daily. It gave me such joy that I could soothe a stomach ache with some quickly picked peppermint, or garnish our potatoes, lentils, and flatbread with authentic curry (maybe not, but okay) without having to purchase a thing.
It was probably pushing it to plant a tomato between the curb and the alley and sidewalk, adjacent to the dog park where it most assuredly received abundant inputs of nitrogen from canine passers-by, but a chance purchase during this time of Mother Earth News, as well as a bargain book on herbs, cemented my passion for trying to grow things. Being dropped by our HMO and taking a few nutrition classes helped me become just as interested in healing things. I wanted to grow and make ALL of our food, and medicine, and I reasoned that if we grew most of our food our need for the medical world would likely be minimal.
We bought our first home ever a year later. It was surrounded by refuges, rivers, and bays, but it was not the cutest building. It was sided with mint green vinyl (yuck!) but it was affordable and had plenty of decent re-finishable hardwood floors. Even better than that, it had excellent, friable soil. Because we were in a definite floodplain, our area was like the River Nile for growing things. I’d brought all my pots of perennial and biennial plants along with us, nursing them along through a few bumpy moves, planting them in this most excellent soil and watching them eventually thrive.
Around the corner (country-speak for “just a few miles away”) there was an incredible nursery called “Linda’s Garden.” It was several greenhouses with over 200 varieties of herbs, a treasure. Her herbs were inexpensive, well-suited to our area, and bless her, she even held my children for me as I shopped. I only wish I’d shopped there more when I lived there, but I learned so much from Linda personally, that I still keep a 22-year old copy of her catalog in my files for reference.
Aside from a font of knowledge, Linda was an honest businesswoman with integrity. When I inquired about purchasing Red Clover, having heard it was good for people with cancer, she told me to hold off from buying it, as it probably grew all around me in my yard. She was right. I saw all the plants I grew from her thrive in our Back Bay soil, and visited her store at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market regularly, and once when I was there, I picked up a copy of The Wild Foods Forum.
This was an awesome segue from Linda’s response to me regarding Red Clover. I had wanted it, and there it was. I had merely to recognize it. And so it was with many wild foods and herbs, I realized, after reading esteemed editor Vickie Shufer’s articles, and taking some of her classes.
One of the best meals to this day I have ever eaten was gathered and prepared at her Thanksgiving class, usually offered the weekend before the actual holiday. The meal consisted of Partridgeberry Pizza, wild rice, Lamb’s quarters, and so many other delicacies that I and people I’d just met that day and bonded with while preparing and eating. It was fantastic. And it is no lie to say that after we’d taken a pause while eating it, everyone appeared flush, exuberant, and youthful. We’d all been infused with things growing and graciously prepared right there at Seashore State Park (now called “First Landing”). I was hooked!
While I’d been learning to make tea, salves, tinctures, and even shampoos and culinary mixes with all the things I was growing at home, I learned I could relax a bit and maybe not weed quite so much. And maybe reap more because of it. I let the unidentified plants grow until their names became known and I could deem them either friends or foe.
The inner peace that results when you know that even an abandoned city plot can provide you sustenance as long as you know what you are looking for is unparalleled. To know you can propagate a plant from a stem if one has a willing source is medicinal indeed…a bulk section of a health food store is great, but a garden reduces the need for even driving there and having to make a taxable purchase.
I’m not sure if my kids really pick up on why I spend time foraging in the meadow or spend hours in potting soil in the greenhouse for something when we could go buy it or even have it delivered straight to our doorstep, but I am pleased to see them head for the jar of catnip when they have a headache, or lavender or St. John’s oil when they burn themselves while cooking.
They identify Lamb’s quarters and can even exclaim over its inclusion in lasagna. And none of them can deny that pokeberry is a fine purple hair dye, if not medicinal.
It is even more impressive to see the dogs, chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, and other animals that have lived in our backyard find just the right herb amongst the hundreds of species growing, even when they have no book or teacher pointing it out for them. At some point, I am guessing we humans possessed this same humble but incredible knowledge, but much of it has been lost.
I suppose I am hoping that in this family at least, some of that knowledge has been gleaned from observation and use and will carry on to the next generation. This is why I forage, plant, make medicine, and see that after all this patience and practice, my brown thumbs have become green after all.