CALENDULA AND LAVENDER HEALING BALM

Balms and salves can be stored up to a year in a cool, dark place with your first aid supplies.  They will then be at the ready to apply to minor wounds and burns.  

For this recipe, you will need to make an infused oil. You will find a recipe here.

Calendula & Lavender Healing Balm

A versatile healing balm for minor skin wounds and inflammation.

Ingredients

• 250mL calendula infused extra virgin olive oil

• 50g natural beeswax, grated

• 25g medicinal honey

• 30 drops lavender essential oil

Make

1. Assemble clean, sterile glass jars and lids to hold approximately 300mL of balm.

2. Heat the beeswax and oil in a double boiler (see note) over medium heat. The beeswax will slowly dissolve into the oil. Stir with a whisk to combine.

3. When the beeswax is almost dissolved, remove from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes, but not so long as for the balm to harden. Add the honey and essential oil, then stir again to combine.

4. Pour into a small jug with a fine spout or, load up a large syringe.

5. Fill the jars. You will need to work quickly as the balm will harden. If you are using a jug, stir the balm between pours to ensure the honey does not settle in the bottom.

6. Allow the jars to cool (I place a piece of kitchen paper on top). When cool cap tightly and store in a cool, dark place for up to a year.

   Note

   Hack for if you don’t have a double boiler simply pop a stainless steel or heatproof glass mixing bowl over a saucepan. Fill to a quarter with water and bring to a simmer. Make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water.

   

Ayurveda is considered by many scholars to be the oldest healing science.

In Sanskrit, Ayurveda means “The Science of Life.” Ayurvedic knowledge originated in India more than 5,000 years ago and is often called the “Mother of All Healing.” It stems from the ancient Vedic culture and was taught for many thousands of years in an oral tradition from accomplished masters to their disciples.

The principles of many of the natural healing systems now familiar in the West have their roots in Ayurveda, including Homeopathy and Polarity Therapy.

Simply put Ayurveda recognises the partnership that exists between nature and man.

As such a lot of home remedies include such things as you would find in your kitchen cupboard or your Indian Grocer. They are cheap and effective.

So here is a little booklet I have put together listing some things that you will more than likely have in your cupboard. I was unable to add links directly to this document but they are easy enough to find online.

Stay healthy and stay sane!

Click on this link to get your free copy of Covid Home Care

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Spring is a bit subdued down here in the wild wild west. We get rain, an old fashioned twelve inches in a month and then we get more rain. So when the weather gods are making love to the stars and a run of fine days happen, what else to do but get out there in it.

I’m curious about the relationship between the native Fuchsia (Kōtukutuku) and Horoptio and how they compliment each other in the bush. Horopito goes from a shy sulky green when it is out of the light to a brilliant bruised purple in the sun. It’s taste is peppery and you can use it for condiments especially good if you eat meat. Mix it with some smoked paprika and bam! Smokin’

Kōtukutuku is shedding her winter coat and driving the birds insane with the floral nectar. This tree is all about the feminine principle and abundance and our ancestors used this plant with women after birth.

Horopito is a shamanic plant, it’s all about wisdom, information and healing connected to past lives or events; connecting with your power animal.

Kōtukutuku or Tree Fuschia carries a soul lesson of Living abundantly, harmoniously and creatively with others.

So there’s that and then there were their neighbours. I tend to collect leaves to print with from the same area in order to make a kind of map or record of that time and place.

O and lichen, since it was lying in the path all yellow and gorgeous, it turned out purple on the page.

And then I nicked some red maple leaves from one of the neighbours trees and was thrilled with that result. Maybe I will write a thank you note on that paper and put it in their letterbox when I go down for my next plant stalk and raid?

Now I am playing with the idea of scrolls and am thinking about making some sea scrolls

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Mother Earth is not a resource, she is an heirloom.” - David Ipina Selway

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I stumbled across eco dyeing last year. Don’t even ask me how I physically came across it other than finding it online but that was After.

After I had attended an online course called Spiritual Ecology. Intriguing name right? So yeah I got up at freezing four o fucking clock on a winters morning to attend this class by Zoom for more than a few weeks.

And met people from all over the world (the course had more than 200 participants). And came to realise how very many people lived with this huge disconnect from nature. 

My God, that scared and saddened me! 

Maori are taught that we are just one of the many children of Papatunuku and Rangi Nui Te Po, we have whakapapa (ancestral lines) that link us to trees, insects, the fish in the sea and the stars in the sky.

And yet in a class of 200 people this world view was rare, I came to understand that ours is a worldview that people were longing for.

To state that we need to reconnect with nature if we are to save the planet is actual BS of the highest degree.

The reality is that we need to reconnect with nature if we are to save our own sorry human arses.

To understand that at the level of the intelligence is one thing but to feel it in the chambers of your heart and the souls of your feet is the difference between a teacher and a tradie.

It’s almost like you have to introduce them at a cocktail party when they are just drunk enough to relax into each others beauty and get hot and horny for each other.

They have to fall in love.

After. I would wonder about that as I wandered around the bush and sea where I lived at that time. I mean I am underemployed now, I have days to wander in the bush - it is my library, my temple, my pharmacy and it is peopled with my relations. Sometimes a conversation happens, if I am slow and attentive enough.

That day in my wondering wanderings, a message came to me in a crazy kind of way, it was about blue printing the lichen in the forest. Weird, I thought but when I got some internet I checked it out and then began my adventures in cyanotype.

From there it was a short fall down the rabbit hole into the world of eco dyeing, of using the language of flowers and of learning to allow nature to take the lead.

Unlike a lot of eco dyers, I am more about the magical energy of the plant being imbued into the fabric or paper that I am working with. The process has taught me to work also without expectations.

Even that was taught to me. I mean one of the reasons I moved here to this wildly wonderful textured landscape was for that, to make prints but no result ever matched my arty farty vision. I sensed a reluctance anyway on behalf of the plants, they would not give the best of themselves, instead each print felt like a kid forced to smile for the camera.

I wondered if I was imposing my will on the plants and slowed the fuck down, waited for instruction.

What gives?

Slowly the answer was revealed in a word - Oriori that kept coming to me at random moments when my brain was at idle.

Oriori is a lullaby, a song composed for an infant that tells of it’s ancestry and tribal history.

Since we all connect back to Mother Earth through the ancestral lines of our natural world whether consciously or not, there it is.

Here is a beautiful example of an Oriori by Whirimako Black, a singer from my hood and my extended whanau whose passion to sing in our native language has spanned a lifetime. This song literally gives me chills and leaky eyeballs. Every. Single. Time.

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This song was one of my rare constant companions in a quarter of a century on The Road. I would put it on and have a little cry if I was homesick. Or to remind me that I belonged, had roots, a place to stand. As Whirimako sings, I can see the shape of the land I belong to, my feet take me along paths in that forest to the place of Toi, our shared ancestor. An Oriori takes you home.

And if it works for a homesick Maori, I think that the plants think that this will work for whoever else needs it.

So yeah that’s the kaupapa - the philosophy - behind what I am doing. Working without attachment to the results and trusting the intelligence of plants to bring their message to the world.

I’m not even the song writer here, I am just the usherette showing you to your seats.

BOILING BOOKS and STEALING FIREWOOD

Anyway, So!

This week I ran out of fabric to dye and turned to paper. The plan is to make little spell books and witchy scrolls, so I want the paper inside to be gorgeous and imbued with magic.

I used …..

Onion skins -(that's the gorgeous red and pink colour)

Eucalyptus leaves, Kawakawa and geranium leaves, some gorse flowers and a few daffodils.

Eucalyptus gives a gorgeous colour print and can add tannins which can act as a mordant, I chucked a couple of bark strips into the water but I didn’t mordant the paper this time.

I used a roasting tray with a lid and stones from the river with a couple of bits of firewood I resourced from a mates firewood stack. So it was something like a home grown hangi without the pork and the cabbage and the…o never mind! I am wafting away on the scent of earth cooked food…..

For the paper I used

Copy paper (it’s not really strong enough to handle the jandal),

HP Copy Paper Carson 200gsm paper (that worked well) and

Fine Grain Cartridge paper 160gsm

I mean you ARE boiling books here so ….make sure the paper you use is strong enough to handle the jandal as we say here in Aotearoa (NZ).

The practice inside this practice for me is to work without expectation, to drop any idea of what the outcome may be. It’s a more than a straight out process, it’s a meditation on possibilities. Which leads me onto the next practice within this practice which is to let go of CONTROL and finally to have and hold HOPE which is for me the most essential of human emotions. All wrapped up in a nice little bundle of PATIENCE!

All of these qualities I understand intellectually…and am being taught on a daily basis. Expectation and reward, control, patience and hope are all something we are struggling with all over the planet -some of us for the first time in our privileged lives!

Eco dyeing, working with the magic of plants is the actual practice that embeds that learning deep into the chambers of my heart, seeps through the soles of my bare feet.

This is the difference between the teacher and the tradie.

Love You Lots

I really really LOVE Emergence Magazine, I hope you do too. Don’t forget to check out their events page if you want to join an online class.

If the idea of eco dyeing is getting you jazzed…check out India Flint the Guru of Eucalyptus Eco Dye.

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I’m pretty sure that I was Punjabi in a previous life, the food from Punjab strikes me in the heart chakra before it even arrives in my stomach. The aroma of fresh ground wheat chapatti as it heats on the pan, the tang of pickle, the fresh sour taste of curd (yoghurt)…….a good Punjabi breakfast is total soul food for me.

When I lived in Delhi with a Nepali house man, he took one look at my Kiwi proportions and decided to feed me like he would a Punjabi matron. So paratha for breakfast was the order of most office days and even though I grew tired of them, it’s just not in my DNA to refuse a good paratha.

So make up a dough with

• I cup of wheat flour, salt and half a cup of water. You really have to work the dough, the more you fling it around and fold and turn and punch and fold and turn, the more you break down the gluten in the flour and the lighter your bread. A good fifteen minutes of kneading bread is good for body and soul and is also a nice meditation.

  Let it rest for 15 minutes while you make the filling

  For the Filling

• 2 potato

• 1 tablespoon coriander leaves

• salt as required

• 1 tablespoon ghee

• 1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder

• 2 tablespoon onion

• 1/2 teaspoon garam masala powder

  Boil a couple of extra spuds the night before and mash them. Take them out from the fridge and add chopped onions, coriander leaves, salt, garam masala powder and red chilli powder. Mix well so that no lumps remain. Ensure that you have finely chopped the onions or the filling will fall out.

  Make small-medium balls of the dough and roll them out into 3 to 4-inch circles. Add a spoonful of potato filling in the centre.

  Gradually press the rolling pin on all sides while making the parathas. Be very careful to apply pressure evenly.

  Now, roll them with a rolling pin into round parathas. Apply the pressure very evenly and gently on all sides. Press very lightly so that the mixture does not come out.

  Heat an iron pan and roast the parathas, cooking them on both sides with a spoonful of ghee.

  If you want to use less ghee on the parathas, first roast them on both sides on low flame and when they are slightly crispy, apply ghee with a kitchen brush on both sides.

  It’s all about keeping the pan at optimum heat. Once you have heated the pan, turn the flame down and keep it at a lower than medium heat.

  

I tried the recipe given to me with apple juice rather than straight sugar water because I thought the pectin in the juice would help to set the syrup.

Make sure you forage your dandelions away from the roadside or any other pollutants. Harvesting dandelions is more than an excuse to leave your lawn to go wild, its actually sustainable small scale farming!

Dandelions are good for your lawn. Their wide spreading roots loosen hardpacked soil, aerate the earth and help reduce erosion. The deep taproot pulls nutrients such as calcium from deep in the soil and makes them available to other plants. Dandelions actually fertilize the grass

The best time is early morning when the flowers are just open.

Remove the yellow petals from the green stems.

Rinse or soak in some water to release any critters who may have slept over night in your flowers.

Make a tea with the flowers and allow to steep overnight in the moonlight.

Strain and bring to boil using equal amounts of liquid and sugar.

Leave it on a lazy slow gentle rolling boil for about an hour until the syrup coats the back of the spoon.

You can PIMP this honey with a vanilla pod or a grating of lemon. You can add other flowers like borage or marigold. Try this with rose petals too.

Rose Petal Jam