THE FIRST STIRRINGS OF AN APOTHECARY

We are always in conversation with the natural world. The plants are listening, and they are speaking to us.

Feb 03, 2025

Tinctures and oils started in Frederick.

On the Aquarius new moon in late January, feeling a sort of electrified energy coursing through me, I sat at my boyfriend’s kitchen table to open a huge box of herbs I’d ordered that had just arrived on his doorstep — $300 worth of my favorite plants in bulk, along with a few others I am less familiar with.

Like vervain.

I quickly, with a favorite album playing in the background, started my first handful of tinctures for the first time in more than two years. I was so in my element, I could’ve cried.

I can’t express how much I’ve missed actually using my own medicines, most notably my “Extra Calm” and “My Moon” tinctures. (Apparently other people miss them, too; two years after closing my online herb shop, a customer reached out recently, asking if I was reopening any time soon because she really needed more “Extra Calm” tincture!)

I also made an oil infusion of some favorite flowers and set aside a few bags of herbs I wanted to conduct some tea experiments with — to think about medicinal properties but also flavor profiles.

One of those bagged herbs was vervain (Verbena Officinalis), a plant I’d read about a thousand times but couldn’t tell you anything about from personal experience. Maybe it’d made an appearance when I was formally studying herbalism, but it never became a regular in my kitchen.

A few days later, after the moon had slid into dreamy Pisces, I made vervain tea — just loose vervain alone, something herbalists usually call “simples,” when you use a single plant to discern your personal reaction to it.

I sat on the couch, holding a borrowed mug and watching “X Files,” excited about my first sip — and then quickly made a face. Vervain, as it turns out, is very, very bitter — so bitter, it kind of shocked me … but also comforted me.

Sitting there sipping a new herbal tea brought back memories of my early years of working with plants while living in an old, 1800s farmhouse in Keedysville. That is really where my plant medicine journey took hold, as I was studying through Rosemary Gladstar’s course.

That’s where I began to develop relationships with medicinal plants, getting to know them one by one and going on to know some of them more intimately.

I will, for instance, never forgot my first taste of lobelia tea — when I immediately understood why you don’t make lobelia tea. I don’t know why I made it (Rosemary’s course certainly didn’t suggest it). I think I just made everything as a tea back then. The lobelia stung my throat like sandpaper and forced me to start coughing. I now macerate it in alcohol to take it in tincture form, and I believe it’s been one of the most helpful plants of my life (you can still feel a little “sting” in the tincture, at least if you know to look for it).

I thought back to the time I found a tall, single motherwort plant growing in the cracks of my backyard walkway, just as I was studying it in Rosemary’s course and just as my heart needed it the most (I was deeply grieving at the time after a best friend died suddenly from a heart attack).

As I’d remembered little to nothing about vervain — and also because blue vervain (Verbena hastata) is often the one most talked about in herbalism — I Googled. To my delight, I saw a list staring back at me detailing my own recent health struggles, and I realized vervain had come into my life at precisely the right time.

I swear, they always do! Plant allies come to you when you need them. They are as alive as we are, and we are in conversation with them all the time, if we pay attention — the same way we are in conversation with all living things. Every living thing is exchanging information. It’s just magical when a new plant comes into your life that you’ve needed.

Found in a front yard in downtown Frederick on a morning walk.

I was at a party in downtown Frederick recently and ran into an old friend who I hadn’t seen in years. Over loud music, I thought she’d asked me if I wanted a “shot of a something bomb.” A Jagerbomb? “A shot of lemon balm!” she repeated.

She pulled out a little tincture bottle and told me how lemon balm has become one of her go-to herbs lately. I never really resonated with it, personally, but I was happy to hear her talk about it. We listed our top plant allies — the more uncommon ones (lobelia, for me) and the ones everyone loves and for good reason, like lavender and mugwort.

If you are interested in incorporating more plants into your medicine cabinet, I very much recommend you working with one at a time — for weeks or a month. Taste it, smell it, notice how it affects your mood, your sleep, your energy, your dreams. It takes time. But it’s so worth it.

• What medicine, spiritual or otherwise, do you need infused into your life right now? Can you give that to yourself?
• What plant ally has found you in the past that you formed a relationship with?
• What plant (herb, spice, grain, seed, vegetable) is drawing your attention now?

✦ Found some gin I must’ve stashed away in a cupboard up in Pittsburgh. It will become a tincture tbd.

✦ Snowstorms.

✦ Instagram profile grids are no longer square, and it bothers me in a way I didn’t know possible.

✦ Artist Journal on YouTube, from Adrian Pocobelli :: I love this guy’s channel. I’d never been able to wrap my head around digital art (what it is and why people would want to collect it) until I watched a few of his episodes and saw all the examples of digital art he shows on air. Now I have an appreciation for it (and him). It helps that he has a nice, upbeat attitude and a fine appreciation for art (and, imo, good taste). The show always inspires me, and I don’t even make digital art.

✦ Fav 72 Hours cover in the past three years:

✦ In other day job news, I want to see this play — or at least watch the documentary (I had no idea Mozart had a sister who was also a musical genius).

✦ I usually avoid TikTok trends but had to try the recent one where you type “book” in the search bar and whatever appears first describes you — because everyone was saying how accurate it was …