Sky Island Whispered in my ear

SKY ISLAND WHISPERED in my ear

Sky Island, whispered in my ear, "i want you back." She is sweet with Cliff rose, aweets' al, her baby's cradle, blooming now. Her hair is the color of sunset, like ocotillo flowers,

the way water on sunlight catches your eye. Her hair sways in the wind and the bees are eager to taste her nectar.

Her arm pits are spicy with estafiate, bitter cherry and narrow leaf cottonwood. Her arms are aspen thin and strong, in late September

her hillsides are yellow with the leaves of osha and

aralia.

 Her kiss is bitter not easily given and not soon forgotten like the yellow inner bark of Mahonia.

 My mouth waters with aristolochia, I want to move and walk. I see far away, eyes and mouth cool and moist, the narrow leaf yucca across the canyon moving, behind me the

last of saguaro alone near the ridge, just below the two oaks.

She told me she is waiting with ceanothus, red root and choke cherry. She always makes promises like that, "'I'll give you this and that. Come take me, come inside, I'm yours.' "Jealous at times she won't let me return home, so i am dizzy and lost unable to go ahead or behind. Tired worn out and spent. I wish sometimes she would leave me alone so i could go back to Phoenix

 and see the bright lights of town. But as soon as I go back, she's there again, burning me with her eyes, sharp bitter burning like Anenome tuberosa, 

through the bones of my face, calling, "Come back. Come back to me.".
I go back to her, she is waiting like Mother Mary at the tomb. 

Waiting on the morning of the Pasch.
by Paul Manski

Salvia pinguifolia

Spending time with another somewhat neglected  Lamiaceae or mint family plant,

Salvia pinguifolia, the Latin refers to Salvia the ability to save and the grease-leaf due to the texture of the Deltoid leaf which is covered with fine and coarse hairs when viewed with a loupe, hairy Rock sage, (formerly and concurrently known as Salvia ballotiflora var. pinguifolia). Its a perennial shrub here growing about 5 feet tall. It attracts many pollinators bees and butterflies, and sight of the plant is accompanied by a buzzing sound that says, abundance. It's a plant that describes a broader desert and like ocotillo moves thru the Mohave, Sonoran Chihuahua and trans-pecos bioregion.

     It's presentation is a lot like Hyptis emoryi but Hyptis has a more concave spoon shaped leaf & it's flowers are not like Hyptis in whorls, the bright purple lower corolla lip is striking.

      As a medicine it has warming astringent aromatics with a lavender like quality pronounced in the rich purple flowers. It would translate well into a warm gargle for sore throats. It also the mental clarity of desert lavender waking and invigorating the senses. It combines well with Encelia farinosa for asthmatic seasonal wheezing and chewing on the flowers produces a drying of secretions in the mucosa. It is a wonderful under used abundant Salvia that connects well with the bioregional herbalist.

Yerba Santa, deer house by Paul Manski

Yerba santa, you know this is about meeting the plants face to face, i'm not selling classes, or pounds of herbs, or digging up the last root so we can add another friend to the tree museum, i just want you to know this, you don't have to apologize, there's good beautiful you without changing anything, you can't change your heart with your head, with an act of will, or new words and slogans, all i am saying is, yerba santa... yerba santa eriodictyon angustifolium. Visiting with Southwest herb of healing and protection. Yerba santa's medicine road stories.

If you go up this way when the salt river is running like blood, like mud you may hear the song of the small medicine dear.

  They sing the songs as they chew on the soft leaves of redroot Ceanothus.  

https://youtu.be/shIrIe68sDY

      i  found a way to walk in the wash, i made up a reason, "oh i have to make medicine", really i am curious to see what's there now in August.

 In my minds eye I am both far below in the wash and then up above above where the red river flows like mud and begins the Sierra Ancha. 

i remember the water from the spring time. before the saguaro bloomed. i could see green milky oats, in the water, deep pools, dragonflys and tadpoles, minnows darting back and forth.  the water was like a gree, Deepgreen milky oats and you could feel your adrenal gland trusting in recharging trusting in the springtime. now the water is gone, there was mud, now the mud is gone, it's dry dust, sand and river rock. There are some cockle burrs growing and the large leaf ambrosia. Maybe i should gather ocotillos or cholla roots, or wait here till it rains and see if the Yerba Santa flies into the air, returns to Ancha. 

 i saw lightning hit a saguaro and like a wave there was a tiny medicine deer with sprigs of Yerba Santa flying toward the Salt River, as he flew over my head he laughed and smiled and spit on my head, i could smell his baby medicine deer breath sweetened with Yerba Santa, he said, "come see my Mother at Ancha. She has more plants for you. She'll show you all the plants."

https://pgmanski.blogspot.com/2015/08/yerba-santa-eriodictyon-narrowleaf.html?m=1

     i was thinking lightning, saguaro cactus, small medicine dear. One time i laid on a Rock waiting for the full moon 

to rise over the Ancha and a bat kept swimming and swirling, flying around my head and landed on my hand and whispered in my ear.  I can't remember what he said it's voice was too soft to understand. but I knew I was welcome to stay here in the Ancha and lay on this rock 

and feel the last rays of the warm sun, now set, radiating from the rock, like ohsha roots

soaked in honey, like monarda in apple cider vinegar, and watch the full moon.

    this is a drainage off the Ancha, lower deer house

. i saw a white yellow patch of a white tail, move silently through the Cephalanthus occidentalis, the green button brush. out of the wash and disappear into the mesquite. yes this is Ancha's deer house. 

i always call Ancha, her, she, her deer house. her being the milky way, those stars that go from horizon to horizon, they are the medicine road. so i call it her deer house and it is really the Milky Way's  deer house. it's her deer house and that Milky Way is the medicine road. so i am walking the milky way, medicine road deer house through this creek bed, through this place, through the deer house, walking  lower deer house.

     i feel stupid and silly to talk about a medicine road, yep that is the road that I follow. it's a lonely road and sometimes I wonder if I can keep on traveling this road with lightning, saguaros, cholla and brittle bush. Osha and small medicine deer whispering in my ears. how could the milky way be a medicine road through the deer house, through her deer house? 

and is this my deer house or just another deer house, or maybe like a deer hotel. yet i just saw a deer run through the button brush

, i could see inside her thighs, and I know she's a woman, she did more than prance, it was a deliberate enticing move and i probably in another place and time could've been her man, i would of chased her through the mesquite bosque. maybe all the way to the upper deer house. anyways it was good to see her again. it is good to know that there are deer and deer in the house. after all it would be a pretty poor deer house without deer.  

  

   i'm sure they walk that milky way from horizon to horizon. i was watching the Eta Aquariads and the Perseids and  St Peter, San Pablo held up a key.

He said, "in that Milky Way are all your plants all the medicines you need right here. you don't have to go anywhere. you don't have to travel anymore. all you have to do is listen and taste these plants to see what they do. find out. quit wasting your time.".

Actually falling stars leave a trace of Stardust and when you gather the plants during the meteor shower you can be sure that there is strong medicine there.

Frogs and toads that come out during summer rains, they are good friends with the medicine deer.  i'm sure they know many plants and make good medicine. deer house, big toad milky way medicine, medicine way, milky way deer house medicine.

     so this is the story of finding the narrowleaf yerba santa.

Yerba Santa, you are the holy Erb I believe that when Mary saw Jesus on the cross and her tears fell, up grew the Yerba Santa. eriodictyon angustifolium. you really need to know that this is a medicine plant from the deer house. Mother Mary, Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios,

she is the keeper of the deer house. She gives us all these plants she sends these plants to help us. She can lead us through the Milky Way and through the bottom of salt River all the way up to Ancha -dear house, your house to the upward way, your house that's Milky Way. She leads us and teaches us. I guess you could say that Yerba Santa is her plant,  redroot is her plant. 

      She took me all the way to the top to your house the other day and she showed me a new plant.

Feathery Star Solomon Seal, so I dug up some roots and made some medicine and medicine was sweets and like licorice or Ennis it was fiery like osha. On the top of the mountain I could breath. John told me about this plant how he had been hiking and hurt his knee and he started to eat the roots of this plan and his knee got better. I was thinking about this when I saw a big skunk and the skunk came very close to me. At first I thought all my clothes are really going to stink now but the skunk just looked at me and lifted up his front paw and waved at me

. I could tell this was the medicine skunk for the star Solomon seal and I knew it was a good sign for this medicine works in the lungs and builds all the sinews and cartilage of the body.

     The deer here are medicine deer, they move into Ancha for the summer. when they come up here they bring bundles of Yerba santa  and leave them at places like springs, or at the foot of moss covered rocks. sometime you'll find them in the woods and you know that the medicine deer have been here so I leave those yerba Santa bundles

alone. They are small deer and when St John the Baptist is Beheaded, on the day August 29, we celebrate the dance of Salome Herhodius. On this day you can find the small medicine dear for Ancha's,  sleeping on the Saint Johns wort.

They have very soft and comfortable beds of St. John's wort. The eat the leaves of redroot and you can see them smelling the flowers and as the smell the flowers they often sing songs you can hear. if you call this plant any other name but the holy plant from the deer house then i'm not sure you understand what i mean.

The plants are our friends. maybe they are brothers, maybe they are sisters, maybe they are fathers and grandmothers, it's very hard to say.

it is going to be different for every person with every plant, what they mean to you and what they can do for you. the plants tdo things for you and it's important to realize you do things for the plants. yerba santa is holy because it reminds us of holy things. 

     for some reason I had forgotten about this plant, because for the most part it grows way up high in the rocks, way up high  above, above the saguaro. here though it is below. in fact it's in the bottom in the creek-bottom. I had forgotten it was down here.

     then I saw it and remembered it. It had some sticky sticky leaves from the little El Niño  rains. lots of new growth. 

   somebody may ask what is good for? Well it's good for everything. it's especially good for those tricky situations that happened when people live together with a lot of jealousy. some call it the evil eye. mal ojo. i would call it,  the plant that can help make things right again. like an antidote. or maybe a preservative. it's also good for coughs. you can also take some of the leaves and put them in your mouth and chew them. it's bitter  than it gets sweet. it's good when it's hot because it takes away your thirst it's kind of like a slippery elm, and it also helps your stomach.

     it's a really good plant to get to know. you can rub it all over your body and especially over your four head on top of your head.

    you can make it tea with it but don't use too much and don't cook it too long just put it in the boiling water for second and take it out. then it will be sweet otherwise it becomes very bitter and too strong. 

     so I was very happy to find plant in the wash, and it really increased my strength and fortitude. That's how I would look at yerba santa, it increases your resolve to complete good things

. if you feel weak and just not having a lot of energy to do what you want to do,  it's good to be around yerba santa to bring that resolve forward.

      it lends a protective elegance to those potent full moon datura flowers, the dream medicine.  combine the dream medicine datura with yerba santa, keep it near your pillow, near where you sleep and if you wake up in the middle of night smell it, and it will remind you of what you need to do.

     

Manzanita Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, little apples Manzanita

Manzanita Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, little apples Manzanita.
      So here is Arctostaphylos uva-ursi,

little apples Manzanita. Rich red brown shiny bark, astringent sour leaves.

A tree a bush, a friend who reminds me of an anonymous spring somewhere in Southern Utah, up on the Cockscomb above our house at Paria.

 A seep of water, canyon oaks, coolness and hair like water grabbing the minds eye. 

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, Manzanita:Sp 'Little apples", at Oak Flat, AZ

       Pale pink trumpet delicate flowers that bloom quickly in early spring. I searched for years to see those flowers up on the coxcomb. And they were always gone. Always too soon or too late tour too early or just not the right time. 

Now I find them everywhere,, I see them in the Santa Catalina's, along the rim rocks below Saguaro. They are always near the oaks, you see them with the gamble oak,

 with the white oaks, the Black Oaks, the blue Oaks, Manzanitas love the oaks. You see them with the silk tassel, with the alligator Juniper you see them all together growing happily. 

    For me always the smell of the manzanita leaves mixed with pinyon pine pitch,

juniper and artemisia: to take the Manzanita leaves and mix them with piñon pine sap Juniper

and sagebrush and then make an incense and use it as a way to pray. It makes a very thick fragrant meditative smoke.

I would go up to the slickrock and gather the piñon pine pitch & the Manzanita leaves, put them in a little depression in the slickrock and light them on fire and use it as incense. It sat on a piece of slick rock, wafting up and swirling around into the sky. Reminds me of prayers or "intention",

like Kristina said, or dreams or blessing and protection. With every dream or intention or prayer there is memories of dreams that were only dreams, no more no less, but dreams only. Smoke that didn't rise, fires that burned out, roofs that fell in leaving only rusted tin and walls. Yet still we pray

and we follow our dreams and make new dreams and new prayers a new medicine.

I now use Yerba Santa in the same way. As Kristine would say, "I make my intention."

          Manzanita is a good medicine for physical ailments to for the burning itching of a urinary tract infection. It's good for those itchy burning down there sorts of things that some unlucky are prone to, even though they wipe the right direction. Moist warm hairy soft places are sometimes problematic for multiple reasons, manzanita leaf tea can help. So Manzanita is for urinary tract infections, UTI. It's the medicine for that painful burning itching, it can be used The same way that people talk about cranberry juice to drink cranberry juice. Well drink leaf Manzanita Tea, you make a tea from the leaves and it has the same type of properties as cranberry. It would be good to mix it with the bark of the Mahonia the Berberis

or creeping Oregon grape which also grows around these manzanita.

       Then there's the apples, the little apples that tempted and nourished and guided us back in a dream, those fruits are there for jam

and tea and just to have and hold a tiny apple less than your baby finger nail, ripening in the sun. Nice to know and praise fertility and youth.

Arctostaphylos Sp, growing at Oak Flat, AZ 4100 ft

          But back to the name and burning dried manzanita leaves mixed with pine pitch and juniper branches. This is the bear. The north circling above, the hunter, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, the bear

that circles upon which all the stars follow like shadows, like dreams, like prayers. Good to see manzanita again and in that pollen of spring a memory of hair sparkling like water drawing the eye in closer and closer. Manzanita.
by Paul Manski