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Instead of expensive over-the-counter products, we use hydrogen peroxide, witch hazel, calamine lotion, aloe vera gel, and both arnica cream and calendula cream.  We are ready for (almost) anything! Creams and ointments are often expensive to buy but can be made easily at home.  Here is an easy recipe to make your own curative cream.

Comfrey is beloved by kitchen witches and is one of the best-known healing herbs of all times. It has even been referred to as “a one-herb pharmacy” for the inherent curative powers.  Well-known and widely used by early Greeks and Romans, the very name, symphytum, from the Greek symphyo means to "make grow together," referring to its traditional use of healing fractures. Comfrey relieves pain and inflammation. Comfrey salve will be a mainstay of your home first aid kit. Use it on cuts, scrapes, rashes, sunburn, and almost any skin irritation. Comfrey salve can also bring comfort to aching arthritic joints, and sore muscles.

Lavender-Comfrey Cure-All Salve

The Beloved who I live with, has a different sensibility about what our yard should look like than I do.  This Beloved finds comfort in order, in straight lines, and in carefully cut and trimmed plants.  Yet, in the over twenty five years in which this Beloved and I have been in relationship, they have also come to understand that I am nourished by the wildness of the wisteria vines and the buzz of bees that annually make our porch sing in the Spring.  I am nourished by the small red tea roses clambering up into the tree entwining with her branches so that red blossoms peer from unexpected places throughout the Summer.  I am nourished by the sweetness of blackberry brambles scrambling over and under the back fence from the neighbor’s yard, brambles with thorns that protect them so that harvesting must be done with full presence and attention in the midst of my rapture as Summer turns to Fall.  And then there are the Dandelions, which in our climate can bloom even in the Winter.  The Dandelions have come to almost fully populate what was once a grass lawn all around the house.  Even in drought years the Dandelions persist with their dark green leaves, brilliant yellow flowers, and whimsical puff balls.  I am most certainly nourished by Dandelions.

Hello Dear Pink Moon! Our sprouting grass moon! The moon of cold frosty nights and the teasing of flowers.

Blessings of spring and happy planting! Make sure to get some good medicines in your garden for self-love and a healthy spirit! Librans love self-care, take some extra time this full moon to check in with your body. Balance your weight on each foot and feel your weight shift. JUMP into the crisp April air, breathing deep. 

While I was reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, a too much neglected classic of witchcraft fiction, I was struck by a rhyme Lolly's Nannie Quantrell had taught her as a child, which she had learned from her grandmother:

If they would eat nettles in March

Who is Mary Magdalene? We may never know, historically. 

But I might have met her one day last spring in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Thistle Stop Café.

The energy in and around this breakfast-and-lunch spot was overpowering, literally. I felt as if an archangel hovered, as if some sky-high bird sheltered this place within its indestructible wings — guarding, protecting, sustaining.

What’s so special about this storefront café? It’s one of several enterprises run by an outfit called Thistle Farms. It fronts the slogan “Love Heals.”

Happy Thursday, everyone! Today our Earthy Thursday edition brings your the Pagan Environmental Coalition, fracking Stonehenge, the wonders of plantain, and an excursion to coastal Maine and an all-vegan ecosystem.

Will "the public interest" lead to fracking of British world heritage sites? The Independent thinks that's where we're headed.