Flower Essence workshop

The summer blossoms are in full beauty - all around the garden, though it's very dry from this heat wave, the flowers are gorgeous.  It was the perfect timing for hosting a Flower Essence workshop here.  Local plant spirit healing practitioner Heather Cain was here to lead this class, guiding participants through the understandings of how to approach plants (listening, asking permission to harvest, gratitude, and hearing what the plant is offering us) when looking for suitable blooms for a flower essence, then the how-to of making the essence, as well as how to choose the right essence to use for ourselves.  This fascinating herbal topic brings us into the realm of plant communication, plant spirit healing, and plant vibrational medicine or energy healing.  It brought a wonderful counterpoint to the practical hands-on herbal classes that I teach at Little City Farm.

First, after mindfully choosing blossoms that are vibrant, the blossoms are harvested very carefully, then placed into filtered or distilled water in a glass bowl and set in the sun for several hours.  The plant essence water is then carefully drained, and bottled into a "mother" essence (in a ration of 50:50 with brandy).  From this a stock essence is made by diluting the mother, and then a dosage essence can be made.  Read more about making flower essences here and here.

Here are some scenes from the workshop:

Lovely lavender

It's time for the first lavender harvest!  This is one of the herbs my daughter and I love most that we grow here in our gardens - it's such a pleasure to harvest as it's easy to snip off in large bunches and quick to tie up to dry.  We dry it in many different ways - laid out in wicker baskets, hanging in tied up bundles, woven into braids) and then there are the many wonderful uses it brings us later this fall and winter. 

We make this lavender oil to use for burns and scrapes, and when ready this medicinal oil is also added to many of our salves; we use dried lavender in calming bath blends; we put lavender bundles into drawers to protect our woolens from tiny wool moths; use lavender for cooking and baking (...lavender ice cream, lavender cookies); and of course give our lavender bunches away as sweet-smelling gifts.  Lavender is an effective and powerful herb, yet gentle for sensitive skin and babies, so it's one of the go-to-always-keep-in-the-herbal-medicine-chest herbs here at Little City Farm.

Calendula harvest

This seems to be an abundant flower year.  I have never had such a bountiful crop of calendula blossoms, that we keep harvesting over and over, and they just keep on blooming.  And what a good thing to have so much, since I never seem to have enough calendula for all the winter months where we use it in salves, soaps and tea.  If I was to pick a list of top ten valuable medicinal herbs to grow in a home garden, calendula would be at the top of the list (right next to lavender, peppermint, red clover, plantain, comfrey - oh, it's so hard to choose!)  Did I mention, the bees love calendula too? 

To harvest and dry calendula - pick flowers fresh on a sunny day when they are fully opened, after the morning dew has evaporated but before flowers are wilted by the heat of mid-day.  To harvest continuously keep picking fresh flower heads before they start to form seed heads, and your plants will continue to blossom.  I like to let some calendula go to seed early on in the season so that I ensure a good supply of seeds to self-seed in the garden when they fall, and also to harvest and keep for next year's planting.  Dry calendula on open screens or in wicker baskets, with good air circulation but out of direct light.  They should be fully dried before storing, and can be stored in clean dry glass mason jars with tight-fitting lids, kept in a dark dry cupboard.