APRIL 2017
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Healing Wise ...
with Susun Weed

Re-birth and Flower Parade



Green greetings!

Whoosh! A flood of sunlight has unfolded all the sleeping bulbs and buds. Flowers below, flowers above. It's a Flower Parade. Tulips, daffodils, drifts of Delft blue, maples, pines, birch, wafts of yellow pollen. Now is the time to celebrate re-birth. I wish you a very merry re-birthday.

Here are a few beauties from my Easter garden. Re-birth from underground.

And a few other plants that caught my eye as I was out with the goats. Re-birth in abundance.

Summer is nearly upon us; breathing down our necks, in fact. Summer begins on May Day, the first of May, the day the fey return. The fairies go underground, into their hills, for the winter every year on November 1, the Day of the Dead. And return to insure the fertility of the crops with the festivities of May Day. Re-birth of Ancient Wisdom.

The beautiful violet fairy that graces this issue of the ezine was created by Rae D'Jur. She, more than any other person, is responsible for pushing me into teaching herbal medicine. We met in the early 1970's. I encouraged her in her interest in using the wild plants around us as food and medicine, and she encouraged mine. When she couldn't make it back home for her class at a local community college, she convinced me to teach it for her. Little did I realize I would still be doing it forty years later. Last month, after Rae's death, her oldest daughter sent me her mom's class notes for those first classes. Life spirals around and around, through death and back again. Our younger selves reach out to us from images and words, evoking stirrings and melodies half remembered, unforgettable, savory, satisfying. Re-birth follows death.

Around the same time – well, exactly forty years ago, according to him – I met Steven Foster, now noted herbalist and author Steven Foster. I used his book Herbal Emissaries (co-authored with Yue Chongxi, whose family were herbalists to the emperors for over three hundred years) to help prepare for my video course on adaptogens.  And I reach for his book Peterson's Field Guide to Medicinal Plants (co-authored with our beloved James Duke) when I want to know how Steven relates to a plant that is new to me.  I feel doubly blessed to have found a teaching home at FireOmEarth in Eureka Springs, because it is Steven's hometown and we get to spend time together. Life is good. Re-birth opens the heart.

And here come the apprentices of 2017. After just a few days, they have received their first assignments and have learned how to harvest and prepare a variety of wild plants to create delicious salads.  What's in your wild salad this week? Re-birth is a barefooted dance.
We'll be making more wild salads this weekend at both of my classes. Join us and re-birth your taste buds.
Green blessings are everywhere.


Flower Parade

Here are the flowers that were blooming Easter morning at Laughing Rock Farm.





Wild Tulips
Unlike the big Holland tulips, these little wild ladies are true perennials. This patch is 25 years old.  In fact, they will even expand their territory if they are happy. I adore that red stripe on the back of the sepal. When the bud is closed they look like they will be red tulips. Then they open, and surprise! Tulip petals of all sorts are yummy in salads.





Narcissus are the perfect spring flower in areas overrun with deer. They are poisonous to deer (and humans), and they are long-lived perennials which naturalize and spread easily. The plain yellow ones are the most likely to survive, I find, though the all whites have done well for me, too. Do not eat any part of any daffodil.





Star of Holland
This little bulb outdoes herself every spring, expanding and multiplying with abandon, and always eliciting a gasp of pleasure the day her flowers flash open and carpet the ground with lapis blue. Although I suspect her flowers could be eaten in moderation, I have never tried it. Some members of the Liliaceae are edible – like ramps – and some are poisonous – like daffodils – so caution is recommended.





Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)
Not to be outdone is the wild bloodroot which has spread for one plant in one place to fifty plants in about ten patches. The white flowers glow as though lit from within, then drop their petals and unfurl one of nature's most unusual leaves. I dig one or two rhizomes every spring to tincture and use sparingly as part of my oral health program.


Susun Weed’s books:




Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year
Author: Susun S. Weed.
Simple, safe remedies for pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and newborns. Includes herbs for fertility and birth control. Foreword by Jeannine Parvati Baker. 196 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $14.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com





Healing Wise
Author: Susun S. Weed.
Superb herbal in the feminine-intuitive mode. Complete instructions for using common plants for food, beauty, medicine, and longevity. Introduction by Jean Houston. 312 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $21.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com




NEW Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way

Author: Susun S. Weed.
The best book on menopause is now better. Completely revised with 100 new pages. All the remedies women know and trust plus hundreds of new ones. New sections on thyroid health, fibromyalgia, hairy problems, male menopause, and herbs for women taking hormones. Recommended by Susan Love MD and Christiane Northrup MD. Introduction by Juliette de Bairacli Levy. 304 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $22.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com
For excerpts visit: www.menopause-metamorphosis.com



Breast Cancer? Breast Health!

Author: Susun S. Weed.
Foods, exercises, and attitudes to keep your breasts healthy. Supportive complimentary medicines to ease side-effects of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or tamoxifen. Foreword by Christiane Northrup, M.D. 380 pages, index, illustrations.
Retails for $21.95
Order
at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com






Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way
Publication date: June 21, 2011
Author: Susun S. Weed
Simple, successful, strategies cover the entire range of options -- from mainstream to radical -- to help you choose the best, and the safest, ways to optimize sexual and reproductive health. Foreword: Aviva Romm, MD, midwife, 484 pages, Index, illustrations.
Retails for $29.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com





Abundantly Well - Seven Medicines The Complementary Integrated Medical Revolution
Publication date: December 2019
Author: Susun S. Weed
Seven Medicines build foundational health and guide you to the best health care when problems arise. Includes case studies, recipes, exentsive references and resources. Introduction by Patch Adams illustrated by Durga Yael Bernhard 352 pages, index, illustrations
Retails for $24.95
Order at: www.wisewomanbookshop.com

 

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