I don't know why, but I have been somewhat obsessed with red clover lately. In fact, I've been meaning to do a FB entry on it for some time now, but I didn't feel that it was important enough. Now, I'm getting over that. I don't care about my audience as much as I did before, and I don't want to do the herbs that I think the "audience" would want to hear about. I want to do the herbs that I want to do and that's all that matters to me. I know that they would want to hear about lavender and st johns wort and arnica and kava kava, but I feel like writing about whatever I feel like writing about on any given day. Anyway, there are 365 days in a year, and I feel like at this point I can already take it halfway through with the herbs that I have in the house. Well, maybe not, but I do have so many and there are too many that I want to try and look into, more than one a day. It can be limiting actually. Maybe I should stop saying herb of the day, and just write about an herb when I feel like it, however many times a day I feel like it.
So why have I been so infatuated with red clover? Perhaps because it is just so amazing to look at. I'm not sure about the taste. its okay. its pretty good i guess. I have to look into what it does, and that might explain it better. maybe the fact that its one of the first that i learned to identify, and that mouna asked me to harvest. I had so much fun doing that. its a good association. if I could have just been asked to harvest one herb every day.. how much fun that would have been. I suppose I could always go back, but i would have to be much more focused on learning the herbs, and insisting that i do things a certain way, so that i learn what it is that i came to learn.. and also contribute enough to make it worth her while to take me in the way she was before.
So ... red clover, such pretty flowers, the heads of them such a pretty color pinkish red, and a big poofball, like the ones that used to be attached to certain socks as decoration. They are truly beautiful. and I noticed that i am drawn to red and yellow plants the most. Then again, perhaps because those are the most common. But I love rose and evening primrose, and calendula, and dandelion, and the reddish/purple ones like borage, which might just be the most awesome plant in terms of the design, color and texture of the flower. Wow, its enough to absolutely blow you away. And self-heal, which I just discovered in the wild on our camping trip in Colorado. Wow, a huge meadow full of self-heal. supposedly good for migraines if my memory serves me right, and they are drying right now on the table beside me as we speak. The saddest thing is drying the flowers, how they lose their life and love and vitality as they dry, and shrivel into a slight skeleton of what they once were, bright, vibrant, alive in the fields, they shrivel to nothingness, but nobody knows this but the gatherer, because when you turn it into medicine, the last thing on a patients mind would probably be.. what does this plant look like in the wild? Its almost bizarre, being able to see the plant both ways, as this beautiful, vibrant piece of nature, true beauty, like a painting that you are looking at in real life... and then the way that it is almost butchered... well its beauty, for the medicine. I understand now, those rituals, in a way, and how medicine people say please and thank you to the plants, we kill them... you know. I never thought of a plant this way, I never saw them as these amazing vibrant things that they are. They are alive. They are amazing. And then we cut them from their source of life, and we take them home and we dry them and they shrivel into these silhouettes of what they were even hours before. Nobody knows. Nobody cries for the plants that we took from natures cradle. Now I get it, mother nature. These plants belong to her. She nurtures them, feeds them, provides for them just like a parent, they only survive because of the things that nature does to make sure they live. The minerals in the soil, the insects and worms that feed on them and keep them alive, pollinate some of them, the water that rains from the sky to quench their thirst, to keep the soil alive and healthy, the sun that gives them the vitamins and the energy to grow up.. up to the sky towards the sun, the moon that lulls them to sleep, the streams that carry nutrients to the soil and water to the roots. Its incredible, this amazing ecosystem, that survives in spite of us. We are just visitors here, we don't get it, we just walk all over it, we don't understand that everything is alive, and we are just walking around on this earth, having nothing to do with all of these things that happen on their own, so we must try to see, see beyond ourselves, what the forest is doing when we are not looking. Everything happens without us. Bridges are not being build without us, but animals are still living their lives out in the woods, and they don't care what we do, we are just a part of this whole enormous life system. It is quite intimidating if you really understand. And it is quite fascinating. So that these plants die so that we can survive, so that we can heal ourselves, so that I can help you heal. Can my patients really understand? I doubt it. I don't mean to make them seem insensitive. You can't know things that you never saw, that nobody explained to you, or showed you. I never knew. Until I went into the woods with my friends and looked all over the place for small amounts of arnica, and my friend, who I am so impressed by, who is so good at identifying plants.. who could tell us.. "look there is some arnica" even while there were yellow flowers all over the place that looked quite similar, she could tell the difference, and there were quite few.
So the four of us scoured through the forest, and found these delicate, lonely little yellow flowers that were absolutely stunning, staring at us, giving the earth the gift of their existence. thank you arnica, for being this beautiful flower, that nobody knows about when they go to Whole Foods and buy their arnica rub to help heal their painful shoulder. That the source of this medicine, is a silly little yellow flower that hides in the forest, and we yank it from the earth, and we take it home, and dry it.. and it looks so different afterwards, just a shadow of what it looked like in the ground in that forest so full of life, it is this shrunken dried out broken version of itself.. the raw beauty gone, and now a puffy whisper of what it once was.. hard to grasp... cut the puffy dried heads from the stalk, and let them fall one by one into the olive oil... and there they will stay for a week or so, I will put them in the window or outside in the sun, so that their properties can soak into the oil, and give us their magical gift of healing.. their amazing medicinal qualities, they dance around in the oil, mimicking themselves and giving us this gift, this amazing gift of healing, nurturing and care. In the end, these plants sacrificed their lives for us, unwillingly.. yes, we must be grateful, as we should be to the cows who died so we can eat steak... and so on. Do we ever think of the sacrifice of life? Wow. It's enormous. I am so amazed. amazed. Overwhelmed, and grateful for these beautiful living organisms that live on the earth along with us, that we also call our home, it is also their home, and they give themselves to us, mother nature gives them to us, so that we can heal ourselves. Thank you arnica, looking at me now from your sad glass jar, melting away into the olive oil. I know that you will make us better. And I know that we must use you wisely. Because you are alive, you are amazing, you are intense, you are beautiful. God Bless You, and thank you plants, thank you flowers, thank you bees and worms and insects that keep our plants alive, and make sure that they are safe and sound, so that when we come to harvest them for our own use, they are healthy and well.
