This summer’s series of plant walks wrapped in September with an amazingly impressive wild potluck feast. It was wonderful to see all the dishes and drinks creatively made with a variety of foraged ingredients.
With the cooler weather here and snow inevitably on its way, it’s time to move indoors. All through the fall and winter I offer workshops in my home, on a variety of subjects and themes relating to herbal medicine.

​I kicked off workshop season last Saturday with Herbs for the Musculoskeletal System. We had a full house with 12 lovely participants and one adorable baby.

I love those moments after a workshop ends and I sit down feeling exhausted but also wound up and kind of high and just ever so grateful to have been given another opportunity to share simple, practical information on how people can use the healing plants that are growing around them for medicine in the home. I find myself offering up a wordless prayer of thanks to the plants and asking for the grace and wisdom to do right by them, while recommitting to the journey of learning and deepening my knowledge and understanding of the material that I share with others.
If that sounds a little flaky, so be it. I don’t think you can go too far down the herbal garden path without leaving at least a little room open for flower fairies and plant spirits. It gladdens the heart and in no way interferes with my ability to understand the immune stimulating activity of water-soluble polysaccharides in plants or the connection between the bitter taste, T2R receptors, the vagus nerve and digestive health. At a certain point everything dissolves into mystery anyway; something profound and inexplicable. In the meantime I’m happy to explore what is knowable and not-so-knowable with both my brain and my heart.
But I digress. What I wanted to tell you about is that all the dates and details for my workshops this fall and winter are up and available for you to check out here.

My workshops focus on easy to find, local, weedy plants that you can harvest yourself and make into simple remedies to support health and wellness. I always emphasize how good food, proper nutrition and healthy movement are foundational to health. I have a bias towards wild foods, nature awareness and walking and I’ll talk about all these things before I even get to the plants. I want people to use their senses to experience the herbs so I will invite you to taste, smell and feel plants in all their forms. This is whole plant medicine and it’s organoleptic learning. Sometimes it’s messy. I’ll probably tell you you’re throwing your money away on expensive tablet and capsule supplements (although I do believe there is a therapeutic time and place for these.)  I’ll encourage you to grow and gather your own medicine, but I’ll also show you how to choose quality herbal products in the health food store. I’ll ask you to make ethical choices (no wildcrafted goldenseal or echinacea please) and I’ll go on about the benefits of supporting local, small-scale herb growers and wildcrafters (full disclosure: I am one!) I’ll do my best to deepen your herbal knowledge beyond a ‘this herb, for that condition’ model that simply substitutes herbs for drugs. This can work sometimes, but it’s really hit or miss and doesn’t even come close to the kind of bone deep, whole body healing that is possible when you treat the person, not the disease and you know how to match the right herb with the right person. (The last 3 workshops cover this material in particular.) In my workshops there will always be tea and snacks! There’s handouts, lots of resources, and sometimes a little something else for you to take home to add to your apothecary. The groups are small, cozy and really friendly. I love the folks who come out and I think you will too.
Here are the upcoming dates and topics. They are $30 each. If you are a CSA member you can attend for free (although there is $5 materials fee). If you would like to attend more than one, get in touch with me directly for a discount.
November 15th Herbs for the Respiratory System
December 6th Herbs for the Female Reproductive System
January 24th Herbs for the Digestive System
February 21st The Tastes of Herbs
March 21st The 6 Tissue States
April 25th Intro to Constitutional Theory
Oh and you know what my favourite thing is about hosting workshops? I can guarantee that at least once a month my place will be thoroughly cleaned! So please come out and give me a reason to dust.

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
~ L.M. Montgomery
My morning yoga begins in darkness, with a single lit candle. Sweet potatoes and squash are back on the menu. Cucumbers are out. Iced herbal teas and fruit shrubs are replaced by mugs of bone broth and steaming cups of chamomile, yarrow, ginger… warming, diffusive herbs that stimulate and move circulation to the periphery. The sound of geese on the river wakes me in my bedroom and I watch them fly in formation as they cut across the sky over my garden. All that is green is fading away as the alchemical dance between chlorophyll and sunlight slowly dissolves, leaving behind the arboreal fire and gold of the temperate zone. The crunch of cottonwood leaves beneath my feet releases a rich, spicy aroma and the taste of salicin in my mouth. The acorns and black walnuts are dropping, ready to be gathered.  The afternoon sunlight is the colour of dried goldenrod flowers, and the sunsets of rosehips.

Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, It-Brings-the-Fall
It is Autumn in my part of the world, a magical, transformative season of celebration and descent, roots and woodsmoke. It is the time of fall fairs, harvest festivals and giving thanks. It is a time of setting aside the large agricultural tasks of the year and to lay in the last of the food from the fields. It is a time when darkness grows and the veil between this world and that thins. It is time for honouring our ancestors. It is time for feasting.

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayst rest
~William Blake
For the forager and wildcrafter there is still much to do, fruit and seeds to be gathered yet and root season only just begun. The early nights come as a blessing though. As much as I love summer, the endless days can seem a bit relentless when one works from sun up to sundown trying to capture all that the bright, short season has to offer. There is rest on the horizon and a folding inward to the long sleep of winter. My body is ready for it, longs for it like a lover’s embrace.

​Meanwhile, my fingers are stained with elderberry juice, nannyberries and black walnut hulls. Each day I pick the beggarticks seeds from my clothes and brush a twig or leaf from my hair. Every fair and golden day between now and freeze up will be lived fully and treated as the precious gift it is, in this world where there are Octobers.