In the beginning

The first natural medicine I recall growing and using probably was the Aloe Vera plant.

While my mom grew all manner of succulents to surround our patio in Norfolk, Virginia, once we moved North, the only plant succulent we grew was the aloe. 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 right there. My mom deftly snipped a piece off, and placed its cooling gel-end on my finger. Instantaneous pain relief.

Establishing my new roots

Aside from that experience, I cannot recall many more homemade medicine events until many years later, when I left for college. Many of my friends were newly into drinking herbal tea. It was cheaper than coffee or even black tea. College was the realm of Ramen, after all.

A pot of tea, with its odd twigs and simmering leaves and aromas calmed me. Even when I had nothing else to offer, I could usually find some dried mint or Celestial Seasonings™ enough to pull together a pot of tea.

Traveller’s wisdom

Around then, some family members traveled to Jamaica and returned with their own homemade roots tea. They shared stories of sauntering outside and snipping lemongrass. Apparently, the plant grew abundantly outside the doorstep.

I had a revelation: we had a postage stamp side yard, but it was enough for a few pots of herbs. At that point, I knew more about and could apply my new knowledge into applications of healing.

Neighbor’s wisdom

My neighbor Elaine lived across the alley, and she was happy to share cuttings and plants with me. She also was a great source of books that inspired me. I began to believe that my brown thumb could become green with patience and practice.

A birthday brought gifts of several types of herbs- mint chocolate and lemon balm among them. There was oregano, and even a real curry plant for the birthday girl, too. (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. The regular harvest of my deck-grown herbs made them bushy, healthy, and well-appreciated.

The transition from consumer to grower begins

I had little time with two babies always keeping me moving. However, I relished tending my portable garden of pots. They were full of medicine and watered, picked at, and moved around daily.

It gave me such joy that I could soothe a stomach ache with quickly-picked backyard peppermint. I could garnish our potatoes, lentils, and flatbread with authentic and fresh curry (maybe not authentic, but okay) without having to go to the store.

A healer’s evolution

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 further interested in healing things. I wanted to grow and make ALL of our food, and medicine. Maybe if we grew most of our food our need for the medical world would likely be minimal.

Room to grow

We bought our first home ever a year later. Surrounded by refuges, rivers, and bays, it had dream soil but was not the cutest house. Sided with mint green vinyl (yuck!) but affordable, it had decent refinishable 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 was 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. I planted them in this most excellent soil and watched them eventually thrive.

Linda’s garden

Around the corner (country-speak for “just a few miles away”) there was an incredible nursery called “Linda’s Garden.” It consisted of 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 visited more when I lived there. I learned so much from Linda personally, and I still keep a 30+ year old copy of her catalog in my files for reference.

Medicine grows all around us

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. She told me “it probably grows all around” in your yard. She was right, it did.

All the plants I grew from her thrived in our Back Bay soil. I also visited her store at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market regularly when it opened, 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 just needed 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 this was more than often the case.

Food as medicine

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 people I’d just met that day and bonded with while picked, prepared and ate. It was fantastic.

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!

Weed less? Okay!!!

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.

Peace of mind

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.

Generational knowledge, generational wealth

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 if 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.

Nature knows

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. They have no book or teacher pointing it out for them. But at some point, I am guessing we humans possessed this same humble but incredible knowledge. Obviously, much of that has been lost.

I hope some of that knowledge is inherited from observation and use. Maybe (hopefully) it will carry on to the next generation. This is why I forage, plant, make medicine: I see that after all this patience and practice, my brown thumbs became green after all.