Last week was certainly a scorcher here in Essex, England. After all the rain and cold weather we’ve had it was a welcome intro to summer.
I spent most of the week clearing my garden. It was like a meadow out there and I like it like that, and so do the bees, but in suburbia sometimes you have to train your wild......
In amongst the wild I found some rainbow chard from last year that has gone to seed. It’s interesting watching a plant going through its whole lifespan. I’m looking forward to collecting my own organic chard seeds.
I couldn’t bring myself to cut one bit of the garden yet. It has the best nettle patch of all my nettle patches (which I’ll come onto in a minute), and this year some green alkanet has popped up there and the bees are loving it. It’s such a joy to watch them busily collecting pollen from each plant. I watched two bees systematically go through every flower on one of the plants. There are other wildflowers in this area of the garden and I’m collecting the red clover flowers to make a hormone balancing tea.
Back to the nettles! Every year I clear loads of nettles from my garden. They are always covered in aphids so I don’t harvest them, but this year I collected and dried the roots to make a nourishing scalp oil, which is great for hair loss and dry scalp. I made a video of the whole process for my membership site Seasonal Medicine Wheel programme, so jump on in there if you want to learn what nature has to offer you every month and how to harvest, prepare and work with natures gifts.
I found some cleavers too whilst harvesting nettles so I’ve been drinking some cleansing cleaver tonic water.
To make cleavers tonic water is simple. Collect some cleavers (they’re the sticky plants we used to stick to each other’s clothes as kids), wash them, put them in a jar/jug/bottle and cover with water. Leave this to sit overnight and the next day you have a tonic! You can also add other herbs too if you like!
My various berry plants have all started to fruit. It’s such a pleasure going into the garden and picking fruit from plants you’ve nurtured.
My dog, Milicent, Millith, Mildrew, Mildred or Millie (the name we adopted her with that has evolved with her personality over time) also had some adventures last week. She escaped from my garden! I had shut her inside whilst I mowed the lawn (as she hates mowers, hoovers and anything similar), put the garden rubbish out and then let her out. But I had forgotten to shut the gate! I had a panic as to where to start looking for her but fortunately a neighbour up the road had seen her and was giving her some love. He loved her (of course), said he wanted to keep her. Turns out we knew each other as teens and used to go to raves together. Small world!
As it’s been so hot it’s been too hot to go out during the day for dogs so we drove to the woods where it has its own microclimate and is much cooler. Once in the woods we rested in a little clearing and I decided to lose some clothes. If you haven’t done this before I highly recommend it! It felt so liberating and empowering. I wanted to walk like that but didn’t want to bump into anyone.... Even though we were in the woods it was still quite warm and I was wishing for some water. Next thing I hear is Millicent in water. She had found a small stream! I took my shoes off and had a paddle. It felt so good. I then walked barefoot and my feet were buzzing. (Must remember to take shoes off in the woods more!). Then we got to the top of a hill and there was the most beautiful soft grassy plant on the edge of the path to gently wipe my feet on before putting my shoes on again. Nature is so abundant. This garden of Eden we live in truly does give us everything we need.
In amongst all of this sunshine and fun, I also recorded an online Pranayam breathwork course, which will be available to buy on my website soon. And I launched another new product, my Medicine Woman subscription boxes which are available on my website now. These beautiful boxes will land on your doorstep the first week of every month, full of potions, spells and magical tools to help you focus on your personal practice and live naturally in tune with nature.
Right now, we’re about to go out for more adventures and then to make some magic potions in the kitchen. I’ll post more of our adventures next week. Have a great week 💜
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