Dream Pillows

I have begun making dream pillows to add to my herbal products line.Dream pillows have a long history of use for soothing and helping people to sleep. Small sachets or pillows that can be placed inside the pillow case of one's regular pillow. When I first tried this I was skeptical, but I found immediately that it worked. The herbs really did soothe and I dropped off to sleep more quickly and slept more soundly than I had before. That was with a pillow of mixed herbs, that like most of my mixtures is fairly complicated.

Then I added a hops pillow. Hops flowers are a pale green and smelly beery. (Funny about that, since hops dried in a different way to a different stage are an integral part of beer making.) I didn't think that I could sleep with them in my pillow. But they did not distract as I had thought that they would, but simply worked their magic.

Dream pillows have no bad side effects, are non-addicting, have no calories and are inexpensive compared to the drugs that are sold as "sleep aids". (Notice the drug companies no longer call them "sleeping pills".)

Our foremothers knew so much about herbs and grew them and prepared them annually for use by their families. It is a joy to be part of this tradition.

I will be posting my dream pillows for sale on Etsy soon. In the meantime, here are pictures.




I liked the rather "tweedy" effect of the lavender and buckwheat hulls in the bowl. Buckwheat hulls help to keep the herbs from being too overpowering.

I am grateful for the herbs, for the lore that dates back centuries and for the connection that they give me to the "wise-woman" traditions of my ancestors. Grateful too for the technology that allows me to find and buy the supplies and materials, blog about them and offer them for sale. How different my prospects are now than they were twenty years ago.

Garbling Herbs

Saturday I spent a delightful two hours garbling peppermint. Garbling is the old-fashioned and technical term used by herbalists to denote the process of stripping dried herb leaves from their stems. When I was finished I had a quart bag of the most beautiful, delicious smelling peppermint leaves and a pile of equally aromatic stems.

The peppermint was organically grown and then dried by my friend, G, who has a magnificent garden in the hills above Silicon Valley. She generously shared her harvest with me.

I love the word, "garbling". Like a little kid with a new word, I have been repeating it every chance I get over the last week.

The weather has returned to normal for us. Cool in the mornings and warm but not hot in the afternoons. A blessed and beautiful sea breeze comforts us and makes it possible to enjoy the long days, rather than trying to hide from the light, which also means heat.

Last night as I opened the curtain in one room, to let this delicious air through, I noticed that my neighbor's pomegranate tree still has flowers on it. I have been wondering for several weeks how much longer the flowers would last and when the fruit would show. It is there now. Small, shiny red balls set just above the flowers look like Christmas ornaments. So beautiful and so promising!

Another friend brought me a peck of Gravenstein apples yesterday. I should freeze apple slices for later, but will probably share them instead. Peeling is one of the small hand tasks my hands no longer like to do and I prefer to comfort them with easy tasks rather than push them in frustration.

Gratitude is large in my mind this morning. Gratitude for beautiful things from friends' gardens, for the climate that I live in and for the gift of electricity. The house fan is running in the background, for the house is still stuffy. Without electricity none of the fans would work; the computer could never have even been imagined, let alone become so ubiquitous in our lives. Our lives would not be the same at all.

Still, while we depend on technology, we also do what our ancestors did, harvesting fruit and garbling herbs. I like the connections and am glad to be alive at this time.

Lavender

Lavender is one of the most beautiful herbs that can be planted in a garden. In a Mediterranean climate the plants will last a very long time. Mine is over twenty years old. Even when it is not blooming, it is a lovely plant and while the flowers are used for culinary, medicinal, decorative and personal care products, the leaves are also fragrant.

Here is my one remaining lavender plant in bloom



I believe that this particular lavender plant is English lavender. My favorite, Hidcote, which was a deeper, bluer color, died out a few years ago. It was planted too close to the edge of the planting bed and did not have enough room. After a decade, lavender will be a big plant, so give it plenty of room.

Culinary uses include Lavender Sugar (see the link to the Spice House at the right), Lavender Chocolate cupcakes, lavender syrup (think addition to lemonade), and all kinds of scones, cupcakes and cookies. Lavender sugar is delicious on toast as a lovely way to start off the day.

Medicinal uses include headache remedies and little dream pillows to aid in sleep. Lavender has such a strong fragrance though, that many people find it overwhelming. It can make a headache worse if you are one of the people who has a sensitivity to it.

Decorative uses include bouquets, both fresh and dried, and wreaths. Lavender sachets can fill a bowl and will make a much nicer air freshener than anything manufactured in a spray can or plug-in. Lavender sachets have long been used in linen chests and closets with stored clothes and shoes. Nice in suitcases too!

Lavender soap is beautiful and lavender is used in fragrances as well.

Here is a big bowl of my lavender sachets. The day that I was working on them, I found them to be so pretty that I had to bring them altogether.



I love the charm squares, small squares of fabric that are pre-cut as part of the quilting industry and the pretty ribbons. Making these brings together my love of plants and my love of fabric and color. The sachets would be pretty on a wreath, too.

I am grateful for the fine old plant that still graces my garden and for the lovely fabrics that I am finding from other Etsy sellers. Grateful, too, for the beautiful, fine weather we are enjoying now that summer is here.

Roses in the Midst of Winter

Not really the midst of winter, but the end--and in my part of the country, from a weather calendar viewpoint it is already spring, but today my house smelled beautifully of roses.

Some months ago, my sister sent me a bag of flowers from her garden. A preponderance of gorgeous, dark red roses along with pansies and a few black-eyed Susans along with other roses. She had carefully dried them, for like me, she can't bear to throw them out. Then the problem was what to do with them. I suggested she send them to me and I would add them to my potpourri ingredients.

In a few weeks she will be giving a baby shower for her second grandchild (first granddaughter) so she commissioned me to make her a sachet for the favor for the guests to take home. Using her flowers was a natural!

In addition, I have accumulated a nice supply of herbs that have meanings appropriate to wishing the young lady well and oils to enhance the fragrances of the flowers and bring them back to their summer glory. Tea rose, old rose and rose garden fragrance oils joined violet and honeysuckle and finally a dash of clove and a liberal amount of patchouli.

The flowers, mixed with the oils nearly fill one bag and the herbs that I mixed on Sunday partially fill another. The dining room smells of roses and so do I, for at one point I wiped oil off my hands unto my clothes. I expect to dream of roses tonight. (Pictures will follow in another post. The light was too gloomy today to take good pictures.)

The library volunteer brought me two Mary Stewart novels, which I am sure that I read in my youth. I am enjoying This Rough Magic and just read all about the fabulous old rose garden in the early part of the book before I fell asleep last night. I dream of such a garden. When I first read the book forty or so years ago, I did not recognize the names of any of the roses. Now, after having a passion for gardening for the last twenty or so years, I do. (My passion is usually as an armchair gardener, but there was a time when I read gardening books as avidly as novels.)

The search for the fragrance oils led me to the website of the Rosemary House, an almost legendary herb business, that I bought many of my supplies from when I had an herbal craft business some twenty years ago. It is good to see they are still there and to be connected again.

I am grateful tonight for the rain that we have been blessed with in abundance this week, for the delightful fragrance of roses filling my house, for my sister's sweet generosity as she draws me in to be included in a family activity that I am too far away from and for the connection to a business that I had so long ago. Grateful too to be reviving my own.

Herbs

For the first time in twenty years the house is filled with the smell of herbs. Lavender and patchouli predominate. I spent a pleasant time on Friday filling small muslin bags with Lavender and attaching pretty tags. Yesterday, I mixed the potpourri that contains the patchouli.

Here are two of the lavender sachets--



And here are the flowers--



In the language of flowers lavender signifies purity of heart and devotion. It has been used for centuries to freshen linens and keep moths away from linen and clothes chests, as well as being used as a wedding herb.

I am resurrecting a tiny (micro) business that I loved in the eighties and am hopeful that now, with the Internet, I will be able to do a little differently and a little better with it.

The language of flowers and of herbs as well as their histories and uses fascinated me when, in the eighties, after setting aside an unfinished dissertation, I looked for something to do.

Some of my Squidoo lenses, many of my designs on cafepress, blog posts about my garden and now the herb crafting hark back to that time and tie periods of my life together.

The source is Mountain Rose Herbs, recommended by a friend who is a nurse and an herbalist. The quality is everything she said that it would be and I am delighted!

It has been a long full week and one of great blessings. I am as filled with gratitude tonight and the feeling of being part of a caring community, as I am tired. So shortly to bed and then to read an herbal mystery by Susan Wittig Albert.

Gardens

This is one view of my basil plants. They make a privacy screen of sorts between my front gate and my front door.

The marjoram has grown to be quite a pretty plant.

I am already dreaming of what will come next. Fall and winter vegetables would be good. I dream of kale and chard and onions and even more herbs. For next spring and summer flax and wheat and amaranth and teff--just enough of these major grain plants to have a demonstration garden that I can photograph for my writing and designs. I also want to put in a cover crop in the front yard, but finding helpers to do that may be too difficult. The front yard looks abandoned and it needs to be double-dug, not an easy task in hard, baked-clay soil.

It is amazing what sun, water, a good pot full of good soil and some tending will do for a plant. This marjoram was one of seven baby herbs given to me by a friend in a wonderful long planter that I still hope to use to grow scallions, radishes and carrots nearby where I can tend to them.

I think that the heat did in the beans. They were beautiful and delicious while they lasted. I hope for more next year.

I am setting up a Squidoo lens on Healing and Herbs and another on the mMeaning of Herbs. For like flowers, herbs also carry meanings that are symbolic--give your love basil along with the roses and the flowers can go in a jar while the basil goes into the blender to be made into dinner. Both signify love.

I am grateful to be recovering the garden and the lore that I spent time learning in the 1980's--two decades ago. It seems longer, but time is becoming compressed now--a sign that it will be time for me to go.