Black Forest Chai Recipe, Cave Poetry, and Important Apothecary Changes (Action Required)

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Cave Poetry

Razor sharp is the air this morning. 

Indicative of a true winter's day, the sky is solemn and brooding. 

All warmth is withheld, and joy must be sought  created, or remembered.  

I take solace in welcoming the cave time. 

In the darkness is fertile possibility.

In the silence comes the ancestral answers.

In the smell of the heady, dank earth,

we are granted the chance to take back our body.

In our cave time we adorn!

We draw red ochre on the walls

of our igneous hideouts

We butter our lips with roses and fat.

Smoke curls through time

Scenting our blankets and cloaks.

Libations in blood colored liquids are poured

Invoking dreams and visions.

The light comes to us from within our forest bodies, 

our bellies of love and water,

our breasts of milk and sweetness,

our minds of flowers and kaleidoscope minerals.

The Goddesses visit us in our cavern.

They give us gifts of dances and beauty and order.

They command from us our greatness, our fearless femininity.

As the world outside our cave

turns to ice

and incubates the seeds

We gestate our creative forces

and conjure powerful destinations

We render ghee from butter,

we render love from pain

we render forgiveness from anger

and we turn our inner blossoms

into seeds with wings

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Dearest Reader

Thank you for coming along these plant journeys. I know that even though you're here, reading something I have typed, this is really *your* journey. Your way of reconnecting to the earth beneath your feet, to the trees in your own forest, and to the senses tingling and talking throughout your body. 

I'm incredibly grateful to be somehow a part of that for you. 

I give gratitude for you and your divine nature. 

There are a few changes around here in an effort to serve you better, if you are a reader, patron, or ally, please be sure to read this thoroughly. 

As you may know it has been an extraordinary year for me.

I'm entering my second year of offering my Pleasure Medicine Apothecary Membership/Home study course (the Lady's Slipper Ring) and I have grown and learned a lot from the journey. 

I have made an impressive collection of herbals through the process, which I am very proud of. Below is my Botanical Aromatherapy Perfume Archive for the year (Oct 2011 - Oct 2012) It now rests on my abundance/gratitude altar. 

What I've noticed, is that there are two groups that I serve, and while there is quite a bit of overlap, there is also some divide. 

Some of you come for this:

and some of you come for this: 

And sometimes I just want to talk about this:

or this:

Does that make sense? 

So, to serve you better, take these actions: 

1) If you want to connect mostly about plants, nature, and earth based musings, please continue to be a part of this blog, and the Plant Journeys facebook page. You will still receive Apothecary offerings and updates on a semi-regular basis, but it will remain primarily a plants, life, and food-based forum for me.

2) If you're mostly here for my Artisan Herbals, Lady's Slipper Ring annual membership, pain killer salve, elixirs and products, or because you're into beautiful apothecary musings and sexy pictures of red wine and freshly poured magic potions, then the NEW Amrita Apothecary facebook Page is the click to like to stay connected to all of my creative endeavors and product offerings. In the future - THIS is where I will be posting first come first serve offerings such as night owl discounts, early bird specials, and OOAK leftovers from special projects. So, if you love my products, this is the place to be. If you're not interested in hearing about my offerings, this is not the place to be.

In this way, I sincerely hope to continue serving you in the ways more specific to the reasons you visit me, and in the ways that connect you with nature and your body most directly.

In gratitude and beauty blessings,

Ananda

PS - Thank you to everyone who has enrolled in this year's Ladys' Slipper Ring! I am diving deep to upgrade the home study content, going far into the forest to dig you rich roots, and working tirelessly on ideas for your coming herbal treasures. It's going to be a delicious ride. 

If any of you were hoping to come along, it's not (but almost!) too late! I have TWO SPACES LEFT  - but they will only be here until November 12, when I will lock the doors on the program until September 2013. 

For more information, go HERE

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BLACK FOREST CHAI

An intense herbal brew for your days hiding in the Cave.

Into a pot on the stove or wood stove, add 2 to 3 quarts filtered or well water. 

Add: 

~ 1, One inch sized root of Osha, dried.

~ One tablespoon Smoked black tea, such as Lapsang Souchong, or a roasted Mate

~ 1 tablespoon  Licorice root

~ 1 tablespoon Cardamom seeds

~ 1-2 tablespoons Ginger, fresh minced

~ 1-2 Springs freshly gathered conifer twigs with needles (spruce, fir, or pine)

~ 1 handful fresh Black Birch twigs cut into 1 inch bits

~ 5-10 Juniper berries

~ One inch piece dried mushroom (chaga, reishi, or shitake) if desired

~ grated Nutmeg to taste

~ Black Peppercorns as desired

~ 1 Handful of your favorite nuts; walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts work well)

Directions: Gently simmer all ingredients for 30-45 minutes (longer will make it stronger). When ready, ladle out cupfuls as you desire, into your favorite mug. Add cream and honey and herbal elixirs as desired. Enjoy.

xo

Credits: 

Inspirations for Black Forest Chai come from the following:

My Hickory Nut Adventures and Wild Woman's Forest Brew 

My Sweet Friend, Herbalist Darcey Blue, who successfully got me addicted to smoked tea.

Kiva Rose's Wild Woodlands Morning Brew Recipe mmm

And of course, my body, who says - "Give me quiet, give me tea." 

And I must obey. 

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Cottonwood Tree Medicine ~ an Aromatic Panacea

Cottonwood Tree Medicine: an Aromatic Panacea

Some tips from my harvesting adventure on identification, harvesting, and preparation.

Also the launch of my Goddess Devotional Plant Perfume membership

Enjoy! 

Love,

Ananda

Thuja Occidentalis Snapshots

Blue Cohosh

Blue Cohosh ~ Caulophyllum thalictroids ~



In the woods by my River, the Blue Cohosh has found a private clearing to inhabit. It's somewhere between human and spirit world, I'm convinced, since I've hiked past this very spot countless times, without ever seeing it. And it's not just a few plants, it's a veritable sea of Blue Cohosh. How could I have never seen it? How could I have hiked twice as far just to watch the one Papoose plant I found a few years ago?

As I think back to the birth of my own two children, I remember distinctly the veil where the mother resides while laboring. I remember the lucid state between human and superhuman, between bawdy realism and sheer sorcery. The place where the curtain of life lifts to reveal the newest masterpiece, but not without agonizing suspense.
I remember the musky mix my mother smuggled towards me in a smallish cup, behind the knit blanket when the nurses left the room. I sucked it in during my few more conscious moments, savoring the sharp and earthy taste, feeling it travel instantly to my blood and stomach, right where it knew it needed to be. It wasted no time getting to work. This is the work of the Cohosh, the midwife, the one who knows labor. In the thick of it, when it all seems dense and crowded and unchanging, Blue Cohosh roots herself deeply in the cool fertile soil in the clearing of the forest. She finds space where there wasn't any, water where you never knew, and dappled shade from the blaring sun.
Blue Cohosh is among our grandmothers who know the secrets of natural childbirth, of shamanic childbirth, and of the true and deep labors of life. She is few on this planet now, struggling to teach her wisdom to the next tradition holders before it's too late. But it takes time. It takes patience, commitment, attention, and a lot of respect. That day I had set out on the trail to recover my daughters black poncho that I had lost the day before. I took the same path exactly. I scoured the trail, checking each spot where I may have bent down or twisted loose the poncho. It was the third day in a row I had taken the trail, and the same one I've taken from my house and back over the last four years since I moved here. I check on the one Blue Cohosh plant each time, watching it change colors, flowering and putting up little dark blue berries. Something about this morning was auspicious. Did the plant recognize me? Welcome me back? Know that I was watching? Perhaps she knew that I'd been watching all this time .... and that I never dared take even a leaf.
You don't pull on Grandmother's hair. You wait for her to offer you a lock.
I touched her soft, paw shaped leaf and thanked her for still growing, despite the vast over harvesting that has taken place. I told her I was listening.
I continued to scour the path and edges for my daughter's poncho. I began to find Blue Cohosh plants here and there, more and more, where I'd never seen them. It's as if they just grew right then and there.
I even found several more pink lady's slipper. But no poncho in sight. I finally just gave up on finding it, and started for home.
In the Northeast, Connecticut in particular, there are a great many rock walls in the forests. These come from the old farmlands, before it became reforested. They are charming to come by, giving a feel for history and for the cycles that both nature and economy undergo. And in this case, it offers a visual distraction from the secret sea of Blue Cohosh I was about to discover. I only saw one plant at first, and again it was if each one grew right before my eyes. Trickery!
I couldn't even believe there were so many. It was a moment to just sit in awe and listen to the stories from this Great Grandmother.
There isn't any wonder why any good novel involving plant lore or midwifery romantically inserts this plant somewhere. It's historically valid and also indicative of the magic it undoubtedly conjures. It's not a casual use herb, illustrated by a few clear factors; the fact that it grows far away from people is a clue that it needs to be handled with care, the fact that even though it's a perennial, it grows only one stem per year, indicating that we need only take a small amount or the plant will not thrive in the future, and the fact that it's not truly abundant - it's not prolific like food plants such as Burdock and Dandelion. It stays in the deeper moist and magical parts of the forest. (Remind you of a certain special body part .... demanding respect?) It's strong medicine.

The Native Americans weren't stranger to Blue Cohosh. They called it Papoose root and Squawroot, of course. They offered it, often in tandem with Black Cohosh and other forest birthing herbs, to the laboring mother who would either sip the root brew or chew on a fresh root. This latter way was my first instinct, as I wriggled free the one plant I felt permitted to take. I snapped off a tiny end of a rootlet and twirled it around in my mouth. It was rooty and bitter, both moist and dry. I read later that this was not a good idea, that it could cause dermatitis or nausea, or some such reaction, none of which occurred for me. The root, which is the part of the plant traditionally used, is said to be most effective when prepared in water (which would explain the chewing method) and is used to hasten uterine contractions by stimulating the muscles linked to the reproductive system. Perhaps its phytoestrogen content is a contributing factor, I'm not sure. I know that if I take a few drops of Blue Cohosh when my Moon is tense and waiting to flow, it creates instant response. The muscles in my lower back and pelvis relax, and my Moon comes on without a glitch. When I have "labored" too long and hard at something - work, a project, or an issue that won't seem to change - Blue Cohosh hastens the birth of new life that has been waiting to emerge, both literally and figuratively. Both my children were ushered into the world through a Cohosh laced veil. Grandmother Cohosh tells us not to rush precious things, to be consistent, to pay attention, to be committed to your purpose.
Here you can see clearly the 'caps'. These are characteristic of Blue Cohosh, as each year's stalk that grows, leaves its cap upon the rhizome when it dies back for the winter. This rhizome would be at least seven years old.As I hold this wise plant in my muddy fingers, I can feel its vibration, its even rhythm. It smells like autumn air wrapped in a stream washed afghan. It's the discerning glance of an elder, revealing to a youngster whether they are behaving or not. It makes me think of the Grandmother in her lodge, praying for the next seven generations. Being born, myself, on 7-7-75, I consider this my karmic number. I am linked somehow with the rule of the seven generations, or as this experience might suggest, perhaps I am the seventh - now responsible for the next. And so, reverently, I prepare my first ever Blue Cohosh root tincture - with lower alcohol content as to make an effective preparation. It's almost been six weeks .... she awaits her own transformation.
She displayed herself beautifully at my kitchen window for many days, before retiring to the compost. Stubborn old lady!!The gifts of this forest beauty are many. But she needs respect and protection the same as our elders and out dying traditions do. She has many stories to tell us if we listen.