Musings on my mushrooming interest in fungi. What winter blessings! I have just been down the quarry from walking the dogs + seeing if where were any more fly agarics to pick – for friends who can’t get the tincture elsewhere. There weren’t any out, I think they’ve long gone for the rest of the winter now. Anyway, I saw a tree stump + fallen log covered with turkey tails […]
Today marks a very special anniversary. It is ten years to the day since my journey towards being a practitioner of Herbal Medicine started. As so often happens, it all started with a book. Let me set the scene a little; ten years ago, I was training to be a commercial pilot and had spent most of the summer of 2006 flying. Then the autumn came and due to ‘difficulties’ […]
Last year, I realised that the shortening days and die-back of the world of herbs and plants didn’t have to mean the end of my beloved foraging walks or of learning more about the woods I call home or their inhabitants. I fell in love with mushrooms and fungi (Exception being the dry rot that has plagued our house over the past few years!). This year, as the shelves in […]
Something really special happened today – I found Fly Agarics growing down in the woodland by Dorothea quarry. There were signs of more having fruited, but I ‘only’ got 4 – one very large, one, and three smaller ones. But that isn’t the real magic. The real magic is that I’d been picking Acorns, and had them in my shirt pocket. Every time I bent down to pick a mushroom, […]
Almost a month late, but now I get to turn my mind back to the lovely Scottish Radical Herbal Gathering that I attended last month. I had been thinking of blogging about my talk here and sharing learning materials, but I decided to put those on my practice blog and concentrate on my impressions of Scotland, the Gathering, and my interactions with the lovely people I met while I was […]
So, early tomorrow (more like later today as it’s after midnight) I am off to the Scottish Radical Herbal Gathering. One of the organisers, Ally Hurcikova was half a year below me at University and has now got deeply involved in the Scottish Radical Herbal network. So I was blown away when she invited me to present at this gathering/conference/event. For me, it marks another step on the journey – […]
Well, it’s that time of year again – August. When the world seems to go crazy, when no-one seems to be at home and nothing runs because everyone’s away. I’ve never been one for sitting on a beach somewhere doing nothing, and I’ve come to love quirky, alternative and hippie-ish festivals recently. But I like to be doing something so I find myself going as a First Aid Herbalist/Emergency Responder. […]
This is a placeholder for Ruthie – here’s the file you wanted hon… 🙂 Making Herbal Infused Oils and Ointments Handout
I have a bit of a strange relationship with Elder (Sambucus nigra) – it is a medicinal tree that I love dearly and have a lot of space in my heart for. It is a sacred tree in the Germanic folk traditions and every part of it cries out to be used. I even know someone who makes Welsh bagpipes from the stems, which are hollow. Yet, I just can’t […]
So, last Wednesday, I stepped in to give a talk at the Holyhead Centre of Theosophy. I expanded an article I wrote, and which is available here into a talk – and I didn’t know it would be taped. I was given a DVD of my talk at the weekend so thought I’d share it with a few close friends who read my personal herbal blog. Actually, I am seriously […]