Gentle yet effective, chamomile is a wonder herb when it comes to issues of the nervous and digestive systems. Don’t let it’s gentleness fool you, chamomile works!

Now that we have gotten to know these herbs a bit better, let’s head to the kitchen to cook up some great recipes that are also tasty medicine!

My Summer has been filled with harvesting and processing herbs.  Leaves, flowers, and seeds are all great summertime harvests.  Most of these herbs are easy to dry and store for use later in teas, tinctures, compresses, powders, vinegars, oils, and salves.  Some like St. John’s word should be used while fresh.  If you are interested in growing, gathering, and making your own herbal medicines, knowing how to harvest them, process them, and store them is almost as important as knowing how to grow them.

Breathing in steam is a time tested remedy for clearing the skin and the respiratory tract. When we add herbs to the hot water, we can add even more powerful action to this treatment.

For minor injuries and even mild infections, herbal remedies can help. We can use these medicines to heal, reduce scarring, ease pain, and prevent infection.

Some of the most common herbs you can find in any kitchen can be used to make a tasty spaghetti sauce. Most of them are also mint family plants making them easy to grow guests in your garden whether it is in your field, yard, balcony, or window sill. All are quite aromatic showing a high essential oil content making them great antimicrobial allies, and they are tasty and nourishing, making them safe for regular consumption in your daily diet.

Are you sold? I know I was. Let’s dive in and meet a few of these herbal allies!

Here are a few of my favorite recipes for using California poppy.

Sleep problems are very common in our society for many, many reasons. When you are having trouble sleeping, herbs can be fantastic allies to help you get deep, nourishing, and healing sleep.

Pain is an ever present part of our lives. It’s also what sends most of us looking for medical care or natural remedies. Enter any natural food store, and you will see shelves and shelves of pain relief options. How do these work, do they even work? Where does one start on a search for natural pain relief?

In times when pain, anxiety, and sleeplessness plague us, California poppy offers us gentle relaxation and slumber. This member of the poppy family is much gentler than it’s cousin opium poppy and makes a great ally for your medicine cabinet.

Now that we have spent some time getting to more about nettles, let’s wrap this month up with a few tasty recipes.

The pain of arthritis can range from nagging to unbearable. Treatments and their side effects can as well. Counterirritation (rubefaction) can increase blood flow thereby decreasing inflammation and pain. Nettles have been used for this purpose for as long as we can remember.

Allergies affect around 20% of the US population and can range from irritating to life-threatening. Let’s learn more about allergies, what they are, how our bodies react, and what we can do to address them naturally.

Nettle is a potently nourishing Spring tonic that has some surprising uses. As medicine, nettles help with allergies, inflammation, increasing a mother’s milk supply, increasing energy, and decreasing the size of a swollen prostate. People have been using Nettle for food, medicine, and textiles for a very long time.

Now that we have spent a month discussing lemon balm and some of her uses, let’s have some fun and dive into recipes including kitchen sink medicine making.

While I love and appreciate herbs and their abilities to help us heal in many ways, they can only do so much. It is up to us to make sure our bodies are capable of mounting a correct immune response. There are issues of genetic inheritance that do make real difference, but how we live our lives, what we eat, and how we invest our mental/emotional energy can change how our genes work. This is the field of epigenetics and is a fascinating topic to study. We will also be incorporating some of the concepts of psychoneuroimmunology in today’s topic.

The summary of what we will discuss today is as follows:

• What you do matters!

That’s really it. In a world which at times can feel out of control and random, there are things we can do that can make a difference. Let’s jump right in shall we?

During stressful times, having a few mood supportive herbal allies around can be a great source of solace. Let’s explore some herbal friends who can gently support us by soothing frazzled nerves and uplifting our spirits.

Lemon balm is a beautiful smelling and flavorful herb that gently soothes our frayed nerves. We can use this herb to support our memory, calm an upset stomach, support sleep, heal viral sores, calm an overactive thyroid, and gently lift us up during times of depression and heartache. Not too bad for this friend of the bees.

Here we are, nearing the end of March and our time focusing on Calendula. We have explored the healing this flower offers, we have looked at how healthy skin on our outside and through our digestive tract functions and how active it really is. Now let’s take some time to play with some herbal medicine recipes. For this month, I will divide the recipes into three categories: Calendula oil, fresh flowers, dried flowers. Each preparation gives us different options.

Calendula is a bright and friendly flower that is a powerful healing ally.  Got a scrape, bruise, or cut - call in Calendula.  Calendula is not only antimicrobial preventing infection, it also helps your body heal faster by calling in the cells you need to make new tissues and stimulating their activity.  Ulcers in your digestive tract?  Calendula tea taken internally is a powerhouse of healing here too.