HerbsAllAround

08/14/2026

Elderberries are ready! We will have a good supply for you, so more about that later.. but first I want to share a question I got from an herb client the other day..

"When I meet with my doctor and if they want to start some medications, what should they put me on that would go with my herbs?"

First, it's awesome that you are asking about this and especially nice that you are saying it that way (often it's the other way around: what herbs should I take that will go with my medications). So thank you for that!

I think it comes down to making an educated judgement call, combining not just herbs and prescriptions but also healing nutrition, exercise and many kinds of physical therapies, spiritual and emotional healing, how to encompass and adapt to all the things you like to do, family needs, accessability and...last but not least, finances. The key ideas there are: "educated" and "judgement call".

Some people will say they just will not do any prescriptions or medical treatments. That is one path. But I think you are asking more, how to safely and most effectively blend the two worlds of pharmaceuticals and herbal therapies.

Sharing two healing cultures:
1. How serious or debilitating is your imbalance? How fast does it seem to be progressing and what further illness does it seem will be happening?

2. What prescriptions or treatments are being suggested by your medical practitioners? What are the benefits and their estimates of how they will improve your health? What are the side effects and possible damaging effects?

3. Here's the judgement call part. Some people use herbs along with healing nutrition and therapies, for a trial period before deciding if a prescription is warranted. Some people use herbs and foods and gentle healing therapies along with their prescriptions, either to enhance the benefits or to decrease the risk of damage and side effects from their standard medications or treatments.

4. Give your docs a chance to help you by bringing in a list of the herbs and supplements you already use, as well as a description of the usual foods and drinks you take. You can even ask for the nurse ahead of time to help catalog these, as it can take a fair amount of time at first.

Once you get your prescription ideas from your practitioners, you can use the knowledge of herbalists to help you decide which healing path best meets your needs safely, with the least amount of unnecessary stuff and cost.

I have helped so many people over the years to combine these healing worlds! I feel so blessed to have gotten the experience of walking with people down this path. It is unique for every person.
Thank you for the question!

08/07/2026

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07/24/2026

06/11/2026

Harvesring while weeding is picking up the pace!
Mullein, raspberry, evening primrose, motherwort, violet, lambs quarters, feverfew, plantain, self-heal all leaf/aerial parts

So many people here have no "old country", no great-grannies with stories or traditions or recipes or kitchen garden medicine habits. We are marooned on an island of modern medicalism, isolated from thousands of years and cultures of healing. And isolated from the common, available useful plants all around us.

Today I weeded and trimmed, and harvested many wonderful things..
Comments with photos

Just learn about one or two herbs every month, your kitchen medicine knowledge will.add up!

05/26/2026

After Week 4 of April's Supported Cleanse program

Spring around here is moving into Summer so quickly! First there were little crocuses poking through the snow, then bright yellow dandelions. Then the lady's slipper and bloodroot and trillium showed their flowers, and the brilliant little blue wood violets! Now the lilacs are almost done blooming near the garden. And next come the roses.

Well! At the start of Supported CLeanse Week 3 I was stung on a lower eyelid by a frightened honeybee. And at the start of Week 4 is when I klonked my head. I feel so blessed and lucky that I was able to cut back on work a bit to rest up and recover.

Even with all that garden drama, I experienced some wonderful and so-helpful results from the Supported Cleanse process. Over the next couple weeks I will post about some of the herbs and recipes I found especially helpful. But I did experience some of the effects I was hoping to achieve:

several blissful days of feeling no aches or pains anywhere
the wonderful feeling of joints feeling smooth and well-oiled
deliciously sound sleep
morning cough disappeared
eye dryness or oppositely goopiness disappeared
any version of GI reflux disappeared
poops and p*e comfortable, regular and no old-lady stress incontinence!
ability to process PTSD, past events positively, peacefully
small skin owies, "athelete's foot" disappeared
many episodes of steady energy with no dips or crashes

ability to evaluate which foods etc. cause imbalance, discomfort and illness, as you add some of your usual food habits back into your life

If you will notice, a whole lot of these maladies are what stocks the entire OTC aisles of our local Walgreens. CVS, supermarket or supplement stores, not to mention many common prescriptions.
Just sayin!

05/13/2026

the lady's slippers, our little patch has almost doubled this year! Maybe I have enough to make a bit of tincture or glycerite; it is an endangered plant and it's no longer possible to find it as an herbal product.
But anyway who cares?! It's breathtakingly beautiful!

Maybe I could have used some a couple weeks ago. I was getting a pot from the overhead rack, and knocked another large pot loose which fell on my head. Ow and a big lump and most likely a frontal concussion and perhaps a little contra-coup on the occipital side.

It really helps to know about head injuries, even the seeming little ones, because the symptoms and experiences can be just so weird and can change subtly but unpredictably.

What helped most was simple things like warm oat milk, sips of light veggie soups (chewing kind of hurt), violet and skullcap tea, switching to decaf coffee, less eyeballs on the computer screen, daily practice at stretching, walking, balancing, and most important, resting a lot. After head klonks you can feel very very irritable and fatigued, up and down for no apparent reason. Emotional reactions can be a bit big and sudden too.
What also helped a surprising amount was sticking to a less inflammatory diet. No wheat products, no red meats, no cow milk, no salt, no processed sugars, no alcohol, no caffeine, and everything well-cooked, warm or room temp liquid in sips. Amazing difference in bouts of crazy irritable pain brain

But take these bouts seriously especially if they continue and are accompanied by feeling extra sleepy; these may be signs of a little too much intracranial pressure, either from inflammation, resolving bruising or from a more obvious blood leakage or blockage . That kind of progression is a go-to-the-hospital kind of thing, but it isn't always easy to tell what is going on. It isn't always as focused as the one-sided signs you see in a stroke for example.

Unless you are a former neurosurgery ICU nurse who has had skull fractures in self and family members, go get checked out sooner rather than later after a head klonk, even a small one.

As we used to say... time is brain

04/24/2026

We are making fresh batches of our 6 signature tea blends, just finished Deep River and only have Sleep Aid left to do.

Deep River, Sleep Aid, Stomach Aid, Jin Jin, Uti, and Head and Chest teas are available at shop or garden. Order by pm or on the herbsallaround website "buy things" tab. They are all $8.50 per bag and make about 30 to 40 cups

So many people are selling rhings that I have hesitated to add to the overwhelming marketplace! But I think just once a week letting you know what we are making is low-key enough to I hope have more if an encouraging rather than frazzling effect🍄

Oh hanging out with the tea are "secret pocket" cat roys (mouse and spider); you can put one of our catnip tea bags in the secret pocket. Endorsed by Louis the big orange tabby

04/22/2026

Starting week 4 of Supported Cleanse on "Earth Day".

Holy moley, look out for that release of stored emotional junk! People might not realize that you hold onto unprocessed thoughts and emotions in a similar way (functionally or energetically speaking) to the way we store fat, or metabolic waste products, or nutrients in excess of what is needed, or exogenous chemicals and products in our food and environment.

More about that soon...

The photos show that food is still delicious, but just increasing the liquid form and gently warming spices. Cleanses are eliminative and cooling, so older traditions often caution against eating too many raw foods or drunking too many cool liquids

Veggie soup with fresh nettle leaf! Oregano, peppercorn, bay leaf today

Mug with almond milk, warm with added cinnamon

04/16/2026

Entering Week 3 of a Spring Supported Cleanse. So happy with progress so far! Eating delicious food, even a nibble of "bad" things occasionally, although those things just naturally appeal ro me less and less. Pretty much done with meat, cow milk products, salt, sugar, wheat flour products, alcohols. Still coffee in the morning though!

So for this week it's all about increasing lighter soups, teas, juices while adding a few gentle helpful herbs. But stll with much delicious food. So as I make recipes I will show them here

In the photo, simple stir fry with pumpkin, purple cabbage, tomato, kale, dame's rocket, onion, carrot, garlic, in a simmer of apple cider vinegar, shoyu, honey, water and ginger

No laxatives or harsh purgatives needed. When you get out of the way of your body's natural momentum at this time of year, things start to clear out pretty smoothly. The herbiest things I am doing are still just damdelion leaf and nettle leaf tea. Today I added some dilute juice of mulberry and raspberry, just because that's what I had in the freezer from last year.

I have had several delightfully sound sleeps. One shoulder still crunchy but intermittently, my whole body feels completely free of any stiffness or pain. I was walking through the market and suddenly realized that a lot of stuff felt wonderful. Well things just felt healthy and calm I should say, but when tou spend a couple decades at some level of feeling like ten miles of bad road, a wave of healthy and calm is almost startling.

Tomorrow naking veggie juice, soup and root coffee, and thinking about herbs to carefully add. None of this stuff is very exotic or expensive either

04/10/2026

Today added a few things to Spring Cleanse week 2: a bit of the lacto-fermented beet-cabbage sauerkraut, that I had started in February. Also a simple nettle and dandelion leaf tea.

Continued decreasing wheat flour, cow milk, salt, concentrated sugars, meat while increasing broth, soup, tea, coffee blended with mushroom.

I felt rhings moving a little too fast perhaps.. the body says ok coach! We can just quit all this bad stuff right now! That is encouraging but past experience has taught me that rhis can be a setup for a big craving-and-crashing episode. So I had some of our bread and a little butter in the evening, and a small almond milk latte.

Sometimes I think what folks experience as a "healing ceisis" during a cleanse is actually withdrawal symptoms, especially when discomforts are felt early in the process Your organs of digestion and metabolism have a lot of down-regulating to do and they can't just do it like flipping a switch. Complex biological systems don't generally work that way.

Perhaps later you may experience discomforts more truly related to a tempoary bloodstream increase of metabolic wastes and previously stored contaminants and chemicals. But the Supported Cleanse process makes this kind of unmanageable "washout" of toxins much less. I think it is much safer.