Community Herbalist | Shawndra Miller

I don’t know about you, but I’ve cut way back on inputs lately. Even helpful meditation videos, positive media, cool online gatherings centered around dance, poetry, music… I mostly miss out.

Setting aside the amount of media I expose myself to? I really have to monitor the amount of time I spend in front of a screen.

There’s so much good stuff out there, and I have appreciated every donation-based dance class, every yoga offering, every social connection made via Zoom and Whatsapp… AND I end up quite frazzled if too much of my life is mediated through a digital platform.

Too much time in front of a screen and I get twitchy, buzzy, irritable—yet also curiously mesmerized, unable to break away.

I know that we are electrical beings (a quick web search brings up numerous articles, including this one in Forbes, of all things). That jangly feeling comes from the interaction of the body’s electrical field with that of our ubiquitous devices. I’ve gotten really sensitized to that interaction, and have been using energy work more and more to rebalance myself.

I’m drawn to body-centered activities more than ever, and also to just being outdoors. One of the great things about working from home is the chance to break up the work day with walks, naps, movement, salad-foraging, etc. Even if it stretches my day longer, my brain is clearer, body happier.

Still, I find I want to touch something real after my work day is over. (I don’t take for granted just the fact of having work at all, and I love working part time for a nonprofit I believe in—but my role is mostly about moving pixels around, no matter how you cut it).

So, nature to the rescue.

20200418_135529 (1024x768) Last weekend I went for a walk at one of our nature preserves. Oh, the wildflowers. But even closer to home, what a privilege I feel ever day: to be able to walk out onto the (closed) golf course in the middle of the day.

Today I actually lay down right in the middle of the green in total solitude and looked at the clouds for a while. At moments like that, a big part of me feels like this time in my life is utter paradise.

I know that’s a measure of my privilege, and the fact that my economic and health situations are so far stable. I try to stay open to all the responses moving through me, including joy, and not shut any of it down. And by detaching myself from machines as often as I can manage, I allow that flow more room.

Gratitude: Along with the above, I’m grateful for human goofiness and wacky autocorrects. A few days ago I had a funny text exchange with a friend that started with “70s clothes. This is taking far longer than I anticipated…” explaining she might need to bail on our social-distanced walk.

Me: Darn! Well, do what you need to do. But what do 70s clothes have to do with it?

She: /laughing emojis/ I-70 is closed.

Me: I thought it was some newfandangled way of cursing!

She: Maybe it should be! Oh, bellbottoms! Platform clogs! By all the stripper’s go-go boots!

Me: Poncho!

She: Oof! You win. /goofy emoji/

(Well, we thought it was pretty funny at the time. Leisure suits! Oh maxi dress!)

Tip of the Day: Airplane mode. You know it? Schedule some time to do it. Or in any case step awaaaaaay from the inputs.

Resource of the Day: Interested in learning how backyard plants can help keep you and your family healthy? Greg Monzel, my friend and stellar herbalist, will show how to identify and use common plants to make syrups, teas and extracts, as well as answer your herbalism questions, every Friday at 10 (or watch the replay). (Yes I know this is another online thing… but you will feel like you’re there at Wild Persimmon School of Wellness learning at Greg’s side.)

Last week I spent a sunny afternoon working an herb garden while learning more about the uses of medicinal herbs. My friend Greg Monzel is a community herbalist who’s helped many (including me) with natural medicines that he grows, gathers, and prepares. Another friend, Dawn Ryan, also helped with Greg’s culinary herb garden in exchange for several transplants.

We started with homemade herbal tea in the kitchen, where Greg’s son charmed the socks off us.

Ready for action

Since moving to this property, Greg’s had all his herbs in the “back 40.” Our goal was to help transplant culinary herbs to a kitchen garden right outside the back door.

To the back 40, with Greg’s dog Timber eager to show us the way.

His ingenious plan: to keep a slight trench running the length of the bed, starting near the hose and slanting slightly toward the opposite end. With cornstalks laid in as slowly-decomposing organic matter, the trench will allow for ease of watering. Prepping the bed was our first task.

Planting cilantro in front of the trench

Then, over lunch of butternut squash soup and salad straight out of the garden, we talked about medicinal herbs. Greg produced a book called The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook, which included a list of the most useful herbs. I realized I already have several of these in my garden, though I only actively use one. (We have a passionflower growing up our fence. I cut the vines in fall to dry into a calming tea. That’s after we—and the bumblebees—enjoy the blooms all summer.)

A maypop planted along our fence, one of many plantings inspired by permaculture

Passionflower in summer. We thought we were growing it for its fruit, but for me, it’s all about the tea!

And did you know that many culinary herbs also have medicinal function? Greg gave the example of sage: It dries up things like colds and post-nasal drip. This makes me happy to host three large sage “bushes,” which we periodically snip for seasoning and smudging.

Later, after we’d dug up and moved sage, lavender, thyme, parsley, and the like, it was time to make our selections from Greg’s herbs. I chose creeping thyme, feverfew, valerian, motherwort, pennyroyal, spearmint, yarrow, and a lovely wild mint that has been going strong for a couple generations now. Greg’s Dad first brought it into his garden, and Greg took starts of it, and now is giving starts away.

Herbalist and son showing us medicinal herbs

That’s the way of gardeners, isn’t it? In fact, the day reminded me an awful lot of hanging out with my Dad in his garden on a fall day. He’d divide plants and offer them to me and any of my friends who expressed the slightest interest.

Dawn and I worked together the next day, figuring out where to tuck in our new babies, giving them a good start. It felt great to expand the resilience of my home medicine chest, especially in such good company. And maybe someday soon I will have starts to give away myself.