Elecampane Harvest

A few weeks ago I woke up after a long night of coughing looking for elecampane tincture only to find the bottle as well as it’s mother jar empty.
Without stopping to grab a cup of tea, I walked outside in the rain with my slippers on and dug through the bare garden bed for clues to where elecampane is. I spy little red tops and feel around in the dirt to estimate the size of the root, then plunge the shovel in just once to loosen the deep soil. There are many shoots that radiate off of the main shoot so you have to be careful to not cut them with the shovel.
I am crouched, still coughing, asking the plants: "who wants to help me?" There are three big roots. I dig around in the cold dirt with my bare hands and am able to get all of the many fingered roots until I pull out an enormous root that looks like an ancient sea creature.
I hose it off, bring it inside and begin deciding how much I can use, how much I need and which parts I will replant again.
With my best knife I begin cutting off the roots, lining them up and slicing them like carrots into little rounds.
I throw some ugly pieces into a pot of water with fresh ginger so I can have tea as soon as possible.
Some of the roots go into a jar with diluted organic ethanol for a tincture that will have a ten plus year shelf life. Some of the roots go into another jar that I cover with hot honey, which will be an amazing liver and lung tonic when added to tea. The remainder I fill a parchment lined cookie sheet with to let dry.
The tea is ready, my cough is subsiding and it’s time to re-plant the parts of the root that will re-grow new medicine this year and next. I say blessings and give thanks.
It’s taken a couple of hours, but now there is a specific kind of medicine for coughs, lung ailments and grief. A bitter tonic for digestion as well as a grounding, focusing energy that is calming without making you sleepy.
The photo below is the hollowed out place where I harvested from a couple of years ago, the pink shoots are the newest growth. I re-planted nearly all of the pink shoots.
They will likely flower this summer.

Losing Faith and Coughing Like Crazy

Late November through December for those in retail it's like tax time for an accountant.
The beginning of December I found myself feeling just a little under the weather.
I was confident that with some tea and tinctures I would be just fine in a few days.
As time passed I seemed to be getting a little worse not better.
I did all of the things that make sense, including good food and good sleep and I kept up with the tinctures and teas.
By mid December, as the store was at its peak of business, I spent a great deal of each day with a cough drop tucked inside my cheek, sipping tea and coughing into the crook of my arm.
I could feel the deep wet tidal feeling in my lungs.
I knew it was pneumonia.
I focused on hitting it hard. I dug through my herb room and found fresh golden seal tincture I had made nearly a decade ago, harvested from an organic grower in Washington.
I poured it straight from the big bottle by the teaspoon, not even bothering with a dropper.

My new, more focused, regimen went something like this:
Tea: Drink 2 mugs in AM and 6 mugs at night of
fresh organic ginger root sliced into rounds - about a dozen thin slices and Elecampane roots boiled with apple peels
then adding lemon juice and lots of local honey.
The ginger was keeping my stomach from being upset and helped with the killer heartburn I was having.

During the day I drank nourishing herbal teas from Flora.
Bright green herbals Everyday Magic and Emerald Healing were my go-to teas to balance my morning and evening deep earthy spicy blends much like our house blend Middle Earth, which we were sadly out of the last couple of weeks of December.

I had to switch to sugar-free ricola cough drops so I wouldn't rot my teeth since I was going through an entire bag every couple of days.
Tinctures of
Usnea - anti biotic & drying
Goldenseal - toning, soothing, drying, anti microbial.
Wild Cherry Bark - to stop the terrible tickle and coughing
Ginger - is good for everything - calming & soothing to the gut - heats & moves cold stuck things
Elecampane - is a panacea for me - lung specific, heals deep grief and heals the lungs and throat
Propolis - harvested locally -anti biotic and anti inflammatory
Echinacea - immune tonic
Oregon Grape - anti bacterial and toning
Eight hours sleep every night - lucky
Bone broths - low boil for 8 hours - 4 hours one night, refrigerate and 4 the next is fine
tons of greens - nourishing & sustaining
After a week of this I could feel the intense watery-ness in my lungs retreating. But I was still feeling terrible.
I was coughing so much and so hard that it hurt.
As I am not much of a complainer and often an avoider, it was easy to deal with only the most obvious symptoms at any given time.
Also, it should be noted that I was working at least 10 hours a day, at least 7 of them talking, six days a week.

My sweetie asked me if maybe I should see a doctor, I scoffed. No way, why would I?
Later that same day as I lie on top of the covers in only a towel, still wet from the shower, I cried from the pain of coughing and I realized, yes, this is might be a good time to call the doctor.
I was able to see my acupuncturist the following day.
He asked if I had gotten chest x-rays. Again I scoffed.
He let me know that lung issues can be very serious.
"I know that's why I'm here. I trust you and here I am. Give my lungs some love and help me kick this."
He did some complicated tapping to confirm that the deep lungs were no longer watery depths.
He needled me and checked my pulses and we were both comforted to know that in a few days I would see my naturopath.

Before I even took a seat on the sofa at the naturopath's she said "sounds like whooping cough".
We went over the whole story of the progression of symptoms throughout the month.
It seems that yes, there was some time with pneumonia as well.
Luckily that part had passed and yet I was still wrecked with coughing and now that the adrenaline of December had passed I was incredibly annoyed that I was still sick.

As soon as the dreaded crud I had been carrying around with me was diagnosed as whooping cough I was relieved.
The doctor was surprised by my reaction.
It wasn't until that moment that I realized how stressful it had been the last month to be coughing like my lungs might leave my body.
The deep questioning I felt each night as I lay in bed going over my treatment plan and wondering what I was doing wrong was awful.
What's the nausea and heartburn about?
The main problem wasn't in my treatment but in my diagnosis.
I was working under the assumption that I had pneumonia and although difficult and slow I know (knock on wood) how to take care of it.

Pertussis! A childhood ailment that I hadn't considered.

She assured me that I was right on with all that I was doing and it was the reason I was able to continue to work.

To my then current treatment she gave me a couple of homeopathic remedies, had me add fresh chopped garlic with honey, *mustard packs and *heel drops.

I cried a bit with relief on the drive home. Realizing only after, that my mind was drumming up terrible scenarios of pregnancy, what with the nausea and heartburn. Or worse, Lung cancer, emphysema or thyroid cancer.
The sorrow I was feeling about questioning my herbal knowledge was relieved as well.

Luckily, the contagious state is long gone. I have no idea who may have infected me or if I (hopefully not) passed it along before my symptoms came on.

The ways in which we can take care of ourselves depend greatly on our ability to see the situation.
I was having difficulty seeing the whole picture for reasons I have already stated, but also because it was the Holidays. Capital H.
We also had a death in the family so there were a lot of reasons to be distracted.
Also, I am super competent and rarely does anyone question me. So when I am in a terrible state and I question friends after the fact they will say "you seemed like you knew what you were doing."
Let that be a lesson. Sometimes you have to let your guard down so others can help.

Alea, the newest Flora girl did send me home on a particularly bad day.
She was all "Um, we have a big season ahead of us, why don't you go home, we've got this covered".
I knew it must be bad.
Thanks Alea.

I have read that whooping cough is sometimes called "The 100 days of coughing"
I am over 40 days in and I hope that all of the hard work I have invested may shorten my bout with this crazy beast.

here's to my health and yours
xo

btw
The nausea and heartburn?
From the hernia caused by the coughing.
The naturopath is having me do heel drops, which began to relieve my symptoms very quickly.

Mustard Plaster mix 3 tablespoons flour+ 1 tablespoon dry mustard into a paste with warm water
place thin muslin directly on the chest/lung area
spread mustard mixture onto cloth
cover with another piece of muslin
top with a hot wet (wrung out) towel
let sit for 10 minutes
*be careful of sensitive nipples, the mustard gets hot!

Heel drops- Drink a couple of glasses of water, and then stand on your tippy toes then drop your heels down firmly. Do this 15 to 20 times once a day.

ode part 2 + onion poultice

continued from part one
The thing about all of this is that my treatment would have worked and was working quite well except for the flying.
The cabin pressurization is a killer.
My contact lens cleaner bottle was mangled by the pressure, just as my poor ears were.
It somehow made me feel better, to see the evidence in a plastic bottle.

I was nearly better (again) when it was time to return home.
On the flight back, the pressurization was worse, because even though my illness was mostly gone, my ears were still sensitive from the first trip a few days before.
I actually thought of extending my trip, to let my ears recover a bit, but it just wasn't in the cards.

I won't repeat the drama of the pain, discomfort and all the million ways I tried to relieve the pressure in my ears, but I did come home unable to hear clearly for days and I woke up the following morning with terrible pain in both of my ears.
Every time I sat up I could hear and painfully feel liquid moving about in my head.

My partner had to go out of town on business which left me in charge of everyone.

I actually forgot to feed my dog one day.

I resumed with the hot teas with honey and tincture, while beginning a regimen of ear treatments.

Onion Poultice has worked for me in the past when one of us has had ear troubles, including water in the ears from swimming or too much wind in the ears from the beach or just a killer head cold.

The treatment is simple:
cut on onion in half
heat the onion by placing the cut side in a skillet, until it is warmed through
cover the cut side with cheesecloth or a thin tea towel
test the temperature so you don't burn yourself or especially not someone you're trying to heal and then
place the cloth covered, hot onion right on your ear and
put on a wool hat that will also cover the onion and lay down until the onion has cooled.
compost the onion
repeat if necessary with the other half of the onion.

This helped some, but it felt like there was too much fluid in my ears for it to work fully.

I had my daughter drop straight usnea tincture into my ears.

Usnea is incredibly drying and in the past I've used it for my black lab's ears.

That worked quite a bit.

I had to go to work and still wasn't fully hearing yet, that was uncomfortable so my daughter, thank goodness, offered to ear candle me.

So sweet, before school.

Ear candles are basically 10-12 inch long muslin tubes coated in wax that you stick in your ear, light the end and as they burn down they create a kind of vacuum effect and the smoke goes in your ear and moisture and wax are drawn up out of your ear and adhere to the cone.
You put the flame out as it gets a few inches from your head and you can open it up and see what it's pulled out of you. It's pretty cool.

Then it was off to work and that was pretty much the end of it all.

It was quite the saga and ended up lasting about 7 days with a few extra days of almost all better.
It was the kind of illness that once past, I couldn't believe how sick I had been.

I feel stronger in my lungs after all the elecampane.
I grew up in a household with multiple indoor smokers, so this has been a weak spot for me.

I don't wish this on anyone and I'm glad it's in the past and even though it's been a few weeks, I wanted to give a peek into the arduous and healing world of herbal medicine.

xo

an inadvertent ode to Cascade Anderson Geller

I woke up with a pain deep in my lungs.

The pain was as if I had been running in the artic or smoking cigarettes made of ice.
The lung pain was my only symptom, but I got right on treating it, just in case.

I began with hot tea and *local honey with our basic family tincture **the anti-infection blend.

I added about 10 dropperfuls of this to my tea a couple of times the first day. That night I had a dream where Cascade was with me. I told her about my lung pain and she warned me that it could be very serious. I asked her what I should do about it. She looked at me with her head tilted to one side and said "you're the herbalist, you tell me"

"Elecampane" I said. She smiled and said "good".

I woke up the next day and started a pot of super bitter tea. I knew I would be flying in a few days and wanted to really nip this illness in the bud.

The tea I made was elecampane & dandelion root simmered on the stove for a good long time.

Elecampane is a true love to me, the only plant I ever wrote a song for. That's cheesy, I know, but Elecampane is complex, strong, bitter, sweet, rich and unlike any other taste around. Elacampane is in the sunflower family and quite closely related to the sunchoke and even though it's called elf wort or elf dock, I find it to be a plant related more to Gnomes.

I drank some of this brew with honey and then added more water and let it continue to simmer. I must have drunk a gallon of this uber bitter brew throughout two days.

My lungs got better quickly but the pain and sickness had moved up into my upper chest.

Bummer.

I was sicker than I wanted to admit.

I kept on with my treatment. Stay the course.
This is the part where you get to hear the mantra that comes back to me often from fabulous local herbal teacher Cascade Anderson Gellar who once said to me "herbal medicine is arduous"
Basically why everyone takes anti-biotics these days. Herbal medicine is arduous, it takes time and patience and patience.

Cascade was the one who taught me all about the anti-infection blend.

The "infection" as it seemed to be, moved up out of my lungs and then out of my chest and now had fully landed in my throat.
Jeeze.
I was trying to get things caught up at the store and make the million arrangements for the children, the house, the dog, the chickens etc.

I finally packed about 10 minutes before we had to leave for the airport.

At this point, I begin to feel better, with the illness mostly in my head, ha ha, not like that but in my physical head.

When the cabin of the plane pressurized my head began to seemingly swell with pressure from the inside that was threatening to burst. I was yawning and sucking candy and pulling on my ears while yawning, I was massaging my eustation tubes. I was dring sips of water. I was miserable. I was trying to be patient. I was using calming techniques. Breathing exercises.
The flight attendant came over to see if we were alright. My travel partner explained the problem because I could not hear very well, nor tell how loud I was talking at this point, and asked if she had any suggestions. She looked at me and said "did you try yawning?"
I honestly wanted to hit her.

So back on earth, I now had a killer head cold, plugged ears and still tons of pressure in my head.
This day was all about the runny nose.
The day consisted of putting salve on my nose where the skin was raw, finding kleenexes, sucking cough drops, blowing my nose, disposing of kleenexes, repeat.
Oh and did I say that I was at this point in Las Vegas at the World Tea Expo where I was supposed to be tasting and smelling teas all day.

to be continued: part 2 will include the second half of the super-fun week that was the tea fair which includes a double ear infection, oh joy.

**Anti-Infection Blend

Like all good recipes, it has guidelines and parameters, but is made differently based on the season and what tinctures I have on hand.

Here's a basic recipe:
each tincture is already made seperately then blended after they're complete.
25% echinacea root, dried
25% echinacea root, leaf and flower tinctured fresh
15% fresh ginger root
10% usnea
15% oregon grape root
10% licorice root
We go through about 32 oz of this throughout each year. It takes care of practically everything.
Thanks Cascade.

*a great book to recommend about the healing and magic of honey is Stephen Buhner's book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers

***all of this is recommended for using your own judgment, I am not a doctor, I have no letters behind my name, I make no claims, this is my own experience.***

Spring Tonic

Gallium aparine-Cleavers
Spring Tonic Extraordinaire

What are the plants that spring up by your front step?

If it grows near to where you live or walk it is a reminder that it is calling to you.

For me it's Cleavers. gallium aparine.

Here is an beautiful old drawing

and the quintessential herbal info site

It's a powerful little weed. Bright green and reaching towards you, this is to me the signature of a spring tonic.

A troublesome weed to many gardeners, you'll recognize it as a plant that is long and stringy and sticks to you like velcro.

It's great for making garlands to add flowers to because it will stay on your head when everything else tends to fall awkwardly to one side.

I walked by a flower bed today and I could see some cleavers reaching up to wrap themselves around the spent tulips toward the sun. I picked the tops (about 8 inches) of four or five stalks. I put them in my purse and brought them to work. I simply placed them as they were in a heat-proof pint glass and poured boiling water over them. I let it steep for about ten minutes and have drunk about half of it and I will add more water to it throughout the day until there is no more flavor. You could also just drink it the once and compost the herb, but I like the never-ending cup of tea. It's beautiful in the glass and so alive and vital. The taste is clean, light, green and slightly sweet and mineral-y.

Cleavers are traditionally used as a purifying spring tonic, nourishing in particular to the glandular system.
tonic: An invigorating, refreshing, or restorative agent or influence.

I also make a tincture of cleavers that I reach for throughout the winter when my glands are swollen. The first time I drank my cleavers brew from the previous spring's harvest, I could feel the cool drainage down the sides of my neck within an hour.

Amazing.

I make my cleavers tincture in wine, because it is easily extracted, there is no need for anything stronger.
To make your own:

Simply snip cleavers into any size clean jar. Fill to the top with the herb then fill to the top with wine. You can use any wine, but I prefer to use a white wine so I can watch the color changes. I generally do a triple tincture with cleavers, which is to let the first infusion sit in the fridge for a week or two, then strain out and compost the herb adding more to the same jar of wine, increasing its potency.

Now I just wait until I feel a bit sluggish or my glands feel swollen. I'll either just nip off the top of this or I'll strain and rebottle.
I keep this in the fridge due to the low alcohol content.
The dose I take is a couple tablespoons in a beautiful cordial glass or a small jelly jar and I find it tastes better if you let it warm to room temperature. It tastes a bit like beets if it is a strong infusion. To make a stronger brew just strain the herb from the wine and to the same wine add more herb and let it set for two weeks with each batch of herb.

Don't wait on this one, it really is a Spring herb.

xoxo