Names-plates for the different Thymes

Olivier and his wife Sylvie came to help in the garden today, it was very interesting and I must say pleasing to see their reaction when they saw the progress we had made since their last visit in March. Sylvie had made some name plates for the thymes that we planted the last time they were here, we put them in place and then they got on with weeding the beds left untouched on the left hand side of the garden, not the most interesting of jobs but one needing doing!!

Herbal cosmetics

The rain and wind carried on into Wednesday so we decided to try our hand at some herbal cosmetics. I had some basic ingredients, herbs (good start), lavender and Helichrysum hydrosols, macerated St-John's wort, carrot and Helichryseum oils. For the rest we made a list and headed down to the local chemists, this is the countryside here, no super organic shop just around the corner. Our local chemist served us well, glycerine, clay, essential oils, almond oil and the local oil press supplied the other oils we needed. The only thing we could not get our hands on here in the sticks was either cocoa butter, or coconut oil or Shea butter, never mind we would have to adapt our recipes to the ingredients...ooops forgot to mention the beeswax supplied by our local bee-keeper. We began with a simple balm from bees wax and macerated St-John's Wort oil and essential oil of lavender, turned out great and such a lovely colour. Our confidence boosted we moved on to a hydrating cream by using beeswax, almond oil , rose water and essential oils, we then tried a cream with glycerine in it and finally made up our own recipe by changing things around from other recipes. We made a cream with a mix of oils, bees wax, hydrosol, glycerine, white clay, borax and essential oils, it curdled and we felt just like when the mayonnaise separates, however we persevered, returned the pan to the heat, emptied out some of the hydrosol and ended up with a lovely smooth and light cream. What a lovely feeling making your own cosmetics out of your own herbs!

Braving a freezing May morning

The gardening week in May fell on the coldest week we have had for a long time, not only cold but wet. Lucia, who is an ELPM student on the communicating with plants course arrived on Monday evening. I had bought quite a lot of plants back from the UK with me, so on Tuesday morning we braved the rain and wind and set about planting, Star of bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), woad (Isatis Tinctoria, L), a clump of small leaved Sorrel that I am unable to find its English or Latin name...will look harder later, a lovely big honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum), Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) and many others (too late in the evening to try and name them all). By the end of the afternoon we were cold right down to the bones and spent the rest of the day trying to warm up, if that's what you call gardening...only joking!

Planting at the field and Distilling Bay

Today we took some plants from the botanic garden that were either better suited to the wetter enironement of the field or that we had too many of to the be planted on the field at Romain's. Everyone was busy, planting comfrey by the river or tarragon in the herb patch or Lemon balm under the trees. We planted a long line of peas, collected some fresh wild herbs for a warming tea, blackberry leaves, ground ivy, wild primroses, nettles... Hisham, a third year herbalist student had arrived laden with branches of freshly cut bay. We decided to distil them in Romain's still, the 20 litre still isn't big enough for producing essential oils but is quite adequate for hydrosols. Bay(Laurus nobilis)hydrosol helps create a balance between thoughts and emotions (sounds good to me), it is also a powerful painkiller, fungicide and anti-bacterial. I read somewhere that at the same time as burning a bay leaf you should make a wish, so we all did this around the still.....the ancient meanings for Bay were protection, clairvoyance, purification.
The hydrosol that we obtained was very aromatic one could even say it smelt a bit too strong, I have noticed that a month later it has a much more recognisable scent of bay. Something to remember about hydrosols is that they are NOT a weaker version of the corresponding essential oil, yes they do contain a tiny amount of some of the active parts of the oil but they also contain active parts that are not necessarily found in the oil, these are the parts that are hydrophilic ( they like water). This means that hydrosols do not always have the same healing properties as the plant in other forms:herbal tea, essential oil etc.

A small woven willow fence.

I had been given by a basket making friend some living willow sticks so we decided that it would be a good idea to try and make a living fence out of them. We did not have enough to double them but we did however have enough to fence of the new woman's bit of the garden created by Sandra and Catherine. I will be careful to water them regularly so they take.

The girls begin a woman's corner

Given free reign on a small section of the left hand side of the garden, Sandra and Catherine decided, surprise surprise, to create a female garden. They busily and lovingly cleared away the weeds and set about creating curves and bumps that represented the female form. Limited by the choice of plants immediately available they chose those that have healing virtues for specific female complaints...Marigold (Calendula off) , Mugwort (Arthemesia officnalis), Borage (Borago officinalis), yarrow (Achillea Millefolium), Ladies Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), Raspberry leaves (Rubus idaeus). The onlky worry I have about this female garden is that the curvy bumps will be very dry for the plants as the water will run straight of them....something to look at in a bit more detail as the season continues.