Kelowna Wellness & Medical Herbalism

06/20/2024

Heartsease
Viola tricolor
Wild Pansy

“The Romans believed that Cupid, the god of desire, hit the flower of Viola tricolor with his arrow by mistake, causing the white flower to be tricoloured and the juice to become a love potion.

A Greek legend tells of the love that Eros had for white flowers. Aphrodite being jealous of the flower, turned it into 3 colours to stop his love. Early Christians thought that the 3 coloured plant symbolized the Holy Trinity. The Druids made magical potions with it and used it in purification rituals. King Arthur and his knights of the round table believed the lines of the petals foretold the future.”

- Maryann Readall
The Herb Society of America Blog

The sweeties 😍

Personally I enjoy this herb for its propensity to help clear skin in working to support the bodies eliminatory processes. I find it useful to clear stagnant heat and ease + cool a heated heart. Its nice to support a transition away from liver congestion. It’s a cheerful herb that helps soothe and vent.

I included a quote from some folklore I came across about Heartsease - our historical connection to the plants around us and the stories surrounding them reveals so much to me, these common place knowings are now so rarely “known”.

In the age of fast information, I worry I will get lost in seeking and sharing these slow, intricate connections but something tells me the lost and searching will search for them and I hope to meet and serve.

💛💜

05/19/2024

When chamomile says a little (or a big) hello.

I remember my first cup of chamomile tea when I was about 13 or 14 - a friends mom offered it to me - and marveling over the taste of it being sweet without any addition of honey or sugar. Interesting how our brains store aromatic (and taste) memory in such a specific and profound way 💛

I didn’t plant any chamomile specifically this year but the beauty of perennial self seeding herbs persisted! 💛🌼

05/25/2023

Can anyone use some free fresh lovage (l. Levisticum officinale) for soups / etc? I have a wee bit too much 😅🙈

It’s absolutely lovely in soups and the stalks are great to dry for straws for caesers 😋, in addition to being an awesome medicine plant.

Info on medicinal properties of this herb:

https://www.herbgarden.co.za/mountainherb/herbinfo.php?id=77 #:~:text=Medicinal%20Uses.&text=Benefit%20indigestion%2C%20colic%2C%20flatulence%2F,water%20retention%20and%20kidney%20stones.

Message if interested - it’s flowering in my community plot so I have to harvest it all now before it spreads it’s lovage everywhere 😆💚

(Lake Country Pick Up)

05/22/2023

If only salves and teas and remedies home made from the earth replaced MLM’s - if only the energy, time and funds were spent like that instead.

Oh what a wonderful world it could be. It seems like a viable trade to me.

Salve for all.

All the boo boos.

Anyways, I made salve! It will be available at CJR Acupuncture and possibly our local LC farmers market.

And dreaming of teaching a seed to salve class one day. So much to learn and appreciate.

Teach a person to salve and they can assist in helping minor things heal for life!

🌼 🐝

02/13/2023

Curious about Elderberries?! In this two hour hands-on, in- person workshop we will be making Elderberry Syrup & Elderberry Gummies!!! This class will be taught by Christina of Bees To Berrys, who will share with you her immense knowledge of all things elderberry & elderflowers including their benefits and contradictions, where it can be found here locally, what else you can make with them and lots of other fascinating information!!! (All while sampling some of Christina’s immune boosting teas!)

Tickets available at:
Eventbrite: Elderberry Syrup & Gummies Workshop
This is our first workshop in a series of workshops we will be offering at the Orchard throughout the year!

10/22/2022

Collecting “water dragon eggs”
l. Aesculus hippocastanum

… & thinking about how at his age the world is at odds with a child’s world of imagination - there is much to learn about the reality of horse chestnuts and the medicine they provide (as astringing aids to veinous insufficiency, how we can use them in creams to help with broken veins..) I thought I would feel called to install all of this in plant walk lessons with him at a young age..but ultimately I become student instead & the nuances of how water dragons lay their eggs in trees and how we place them in jars with sprinkled sugar to help them hatch, etc are lessons that may soon leave my sons ability to teach and I will entertain his ability to develop these wonderfully intricate concepts of whimsy as long as he can come up with them. We can nail down our materia medica anytime and always.. but one day he might not be able to play pretend.

Some people say we are our true selves around this age and slowly we are taught to conform in this or that way, I feel it creeping in & hope we can nurture a balance and keep our Leo as fantastical as can be.

He also insists on picking up litter when we go places so now we bring these 😜 .

07/18/2022

07/18/2022

06/29/2022

(Continued from previous post - Violet’s birth story)

Finally you moved into the right spaces and I was ready to push. Perhaps they had no idea how much we wanted this and how much mighty force I had stowed in my deepest places. Quickly they realized that I could likely do it. Still, we monitored you and down the hall and into the elevator we went. My confidence grew as we travelled downwards, the doctors told me my strength may save us from surgical birth.

Into the OR we went and it became so busy. Many focused birth keepers of all kinds in symphony preparing. Finally reunited with your dad. A few pushes surprised me at how little strain it took me - all of my uterine prayers and reverence for myself and our vallley- all of my favouring squatting - my minimal contributions to preparing were just perfectly enough and you came easily through my tunnel.

Pushing you out is my most cherished and euphoric somatic memory.

You gifted me with so much knowing of my messily hidden strength.

As soon as you were born we were off to the races - everything was perfect. We moved into a quiet corner room and were given lots of space to bond. My stomach settled and your dad brought me Earls fettuccine Alfredo in celebration, we nursed and nursed, you were a healthy little bun. I was was so proud of myself. I was in love.

What glory and grace the day you were born.

Happy 1st birthday to my sweetie Violet Amelia Joan.

06/29/2022

On the night you decided to enter the portal between the stars and life the moon was full, the days and nights were hot. 47 degrees Celsius that day.

Our Moon child. On the night you decided to come that moon glared at me as I roared into labouring you & down the highway we went through the mountains and above the lakes. I could hardly look at the moon.

That big orange glowing dinner plate looking down on our tiny car driving the hills - it told me I didn’t prepare for this. It reminded me of how thrown in I often feel into life. But still, it reminded me that I was strong and full of mothering will.

Our doula met us in this portal between pregnancy and you in arms. Life and I both fought with the idea of being any more prepared and when I met her - our birth keeper - I knew she could see us and meet us wherever we were in this in between space.

We didn’t read the handbook. Any of them.

On the night you decided to come I purged through the night - upheaval between each surge and wave. My water broke and you pooped inside and the waves were coming in hard but my body wasn’t opening. It might be long yet. I took medicine. Morphine. The medicine helped me move into the waves, it dipped me deeper into a space I was resisting. The halos of all the birthkeepers that helped us in the hospital, their golden glow easily felt now under its influence.

The morning you came as my body became ready your little body became less so - you moved from a favoured position and so I moved to get you in a better position. Throughout labour I resisted movement and you reminded me I shouldn’t have. Your dad gave me acupuncture while I breathed and prayed and moved and resisted pushing with the surges with all my might. They told me we were soon out of time and they prepped for the operating room. The softening effect of the medicine on my mind gave me just enough blind confidence that I still believed I might push you out. So I told you we can do this.

“We can do it my girl” (continued in next post)

05/25/2022

I want to write. I want to make medicine. I want to hear your story. I want to find the plants that might help and be allies to you. I want to share. I want to teach. I want to create community. I want to honour what I have been so blessed to have been taught.

But I can’t. I won’t. I even tell myself I refuse to throw in the towel on this time offering me the highest potential in healing. It feels big headed to say it is generational healing to have chosen unobstructed mothering this past year. But it is as dirty and rich as the soil beneath my feet. My lineage has been neglectful of the beauty and rawness and deep importance of raising children - career and accolade a much more worthy and notable pursuit.

I can’t divide myself with no help and little village and a partner who is in the season of doing the work of helping others & keeping life a float financially. I refuse with every cell in my body to pass on the wounds I have to my children by putting other pursuits first.

Kind and interesting people have offered help with interest in knowledge sharing - this will be more timely in the future for me.

Sometimes it feels cruel and dehumanizing and sacrificial. Sometimes it feels like the biggest gift. To me. To my kids. To their kids. To their grandkids. My biggest wound being healed. We were meant to take this all on.

I know so many share this type of difficulty navigating child rearing, family conflict, self value, career, laundry, dishes amongst carrying relational traumas of generations that carried values that might not fit, might hurt. I’m cracking it all open so a more grey haired me can fully understand. Me as a grandma visits my heart to reassure me often.

Not yet. Not now. Soon.

Dishes. Laundry. Nursing. Nurturing. Holding s**t down. Violet begins daycare part time this summer and I can see the light at the end of this loving yet gritty tunnel through tear-y eyes. I hope I am making the right choice.

I will walk into practicing medicine with the highest reverence for sacrifice and hope to see your heart a little more clearly too. ❤️