62 Elecampane and Mullein: Herbs for Healthy Lungs in the Cold Season
“Gather close. Keep the warmth at the center. And breathe, slowly, together, until the light comes back.”
Author: The New England Herbary - Thompson Street Farm LLC
Brenda J. Sullivan is an herbalist, author, and entrepreneur. Brenda and her husband manage 1.3-acre micro-farm in South Glastonbury, CT. We specialize in medicinal herbs, lavender and small leafy greens such as microgreens following the organic grower's guidelines. The medicinal herbs are used for their bath and body products sold under the name Farm to Bath.
61 Samhain: The Ancestors’ Table and the Turning of the Celtic Year
We’ve been thinking all week about why this season matters so much, especially for those of us who’ve lived long enough to have a long table of the dead. When we’re young, Samhain is spooky. It’s about ghosts and masks and being a little bit afraid of the dark. But somewhere in midlife, it changes. The dark isn’t strange anymore. It’s full of people we love.
And there’s another turning that comes with it, if we let it. At some point, we realize that we are going to be somebody’s ancestor. The recipes we make, the way we tend a garden, the herbs we teach our granddaughters to recognize along the roadside, the way we speak to people in the checkout line. Someday someone will set a plate for us. Someday someone will make our soul cakes, or our version of them, and won’t quite get them right, and will laugh about it, and say our name.
That doesn’t feel morbid to me. It feels like the most ordinary kind of hope. It means the table goes on.
60 Samhain, The Thinning Veil and the Turning of the Celtic New Year
“Nothing that grows in the light began there. Every true beginning starts quietly, in the dark.”
59 Rowan and Red Thread: The Celtic Tree of Protection at Samhain
One week before Samhain, Brenda sits with the rowan, the Celtic tree of protection, and its folklore, names, and Highland rowan jelly. Then she shows you how to wind a rowan and red thread charm for your door, even without a rowan tree, using the guardian trees beside your own home.
58 Putting the Garden to Bed: Fall Cleanup the Herbalist’s Way
As the first frosts arrive, Brenda shares the old way of putting the garden to bed: tucking it in rather than stripping it bare. Learn what to cut back, what to leave standing for birds and native bees, how to plant garlic at the New Moon, and the folklore of witch hazel, New England’s native autumn bloomer.
57 Mabon: The Balance Of Light And Dark, And The Rising Of The Harvest Moon
“The second harvest is where gratitude stops being a feeling and starts being a practice.”
56 Elderberry Syrup for Cold Season: The Herbal Craft of Putting By
“Putting by isn’t only about pantries. It’s a whole way of moving through a year — noticing what’s abundant, and doing the quiet, unglamorous work of making sure it doesn’t…
55 The Sturgeon Moon and the Second Eclipse: Light at the Full
The Sturgeon Moon rises full this week under the shadow of a partial lunar eclipse in Virgo, the second doorway of this eclipse season. Join this week’s ritual of charging dried herbs beneath the moon, and trace the old grain-harvest folklore that still echoes through it.
54 Virgo Season Herbalism| The Craft of Putting By
“She deserves to be understood as what she actually is — someone who survived by paying close attention, and who turned that attention, eventually, into a kind of quiet mastery.”
53 Yarrow for Wounds & Boundaries| When the Sun Goes Dark
“It is only changing into a different kind of alive.”