Monday, May 10, 2021

Hawthorn

 Hawthorn 


Crataegus douglasii -- black hawthorn



Crataegus douglasii -- black hawthorn, a rose family bushy tree shrub growing intermountain west.  Usually at the interface of creek, meadow forest.


     Greetings to all who work for well being! May you be blessed by Hawthorn, as it has been a blessing to many folk. Within the shame shun reset erasure I wanted to advocate for hawthorn, lobelia, red root and specific exercises in relation to nourishing western biospirit in relation to clotte shot planned demonics, and regaining lost smell and taste.  #Crataegus douglasii -- black #hawthorn, a rose family bushy tree shrub growing intermountain west. Usually at the interface of creek, meadow forest, at old homesteads.

The bark is dark brown black on young branches, with the bark deeply furrowed peeling in strips on trunk. There are many hawthorns to meet.


    It's best as a long term remedy, vs acute, so for chronic conditions, like the ones most recent, blood clotte shots, heart and cirulation issues, essential HTN, s/p MI, angina. For this condition it is used with red root. Hawthorn may increase contracility, strength of contraction, yet lower HR. Red root is a midlevel astringent that acts to purify blood, potentiate liver, working on the final places of veins and arteries, and epithelial points of attachment. See how they work. Test it out. We've entered a time where no one can talk openly here, only face to face conversation, because of the wealth redistribution erasure within the algorithm of social credit score. 

      Hawthorn can mildly dilate coronary arteries and can increase blood flow. Similar in the mesenteric, helping to nourish the intestine and be used as part of leaky gut. Due to a high profile of flavonoids and oligomeric procyanidins, it also has a beneficial nurturing effect on the central nervous system. Many of the plan-demonic issues are addressed by tree along with red root, in terms of clotte shot. Using hawthorn long term with red root can be benefical. 

It was planted by white western people, here and in Europes, as a hedge or boundary. Rose plants with their thorns encourage healthy boundaries between this and that, giving and taking, self and others. In addition birds are fond of the fruits and make their nests in thorny branches, hence protection, nest, shelter, safety, home. So hawthorn is a symbolic talisman of our place, of our plant and of our people. Hawthorn is a voice of preexisting condition, the wild, partly tame tawny grammar of healing. 2022 Crataegus Hawthorn was an excellent year locally for our wild, feral, left alone to do its own thing, fruiting rosacea family, along with rose hips. The haws are now evident and abundant. The aws ripen late autumn. This plant gathered now with the end leaf stem and thorns, dry it a bit and tincture, and later berries. The berry haw can have many different flavors from sweet apricot creamy, to more astringent, with many in betweens on your ramble.  So now i am praying singing songs of Our Lady, who is mother of our white race at springs and grottos, as in beginingless time. Her Holy Rosary is a wreath of rose flowers. She brings a gifted whole plant elixir. I call it feral because it is wild within the tawny grammar of usage. Knowing these plants combined with red root and others growing nearby, ripening at st michael, raphael our guardians, protectors late September early October. Be blessed and bless others as you can. 


     ...your experience with regaining smell post  infection via nicotine gum. I understand initial reluctance to use nicotine gum, its association with tobacco addiction, and the specialized chewing technique. I want to add nicotine patches have also been used. 

I want to postulate a reason for the many anecdotal reports connected with plan demonics, clotte shots and other stuff, smokers and nicotine, briefly, nicotine's role in both the nicotinic receptor cholinergic system, as well as ACE2 receptor pathway in the body, and thus blocking the spike protein attachment sites within the body. The nicotine occupied receptor sites have a decreased potential for attachment. You may wish to start the experiment, follow it, see if it works, to restore taste and smell. I would caution though that the nicotine patch is a better option, in terms of the risk of nicotine addiction potential in comparison to nictine gum chewing. Some herbalists would reccomend a less addictive plant lobelia, which you would take as tincture along with cayenne pepper. A 19th century Thompsonian approach to restore taste and smell, taken along with hawthorn and lobelia. 

Thirdly, smell retraining. Get 4-5 pure essential oils in the little bottles, open the bottle. Orange, lavender, clove, peppermint, garlic, anise, etc - and do a blind smell test, with eyes closed, twice a day. Identify the smell without looking at the label. Then check your results. You can also do this with actual herbs, hops, lavender, a clove of garlic, roots, red wine, white wine, tequila, whiskey, brandy, beer, etc. You want to keep these sessions brief before olfactory fatigue sets in. Keep a smell diary. Can you identify the smell? What does it smell like to you? 

     Know as whites we are a tiny remnant and seize this time betweenness. With erasure, soon an envelope of darkness will obscure, as the sun tilts down. I pray for you and know we will meet God be willing, Deus Vult



The bark is dark brown black on young branches, with the bark deeply furrowed peeling in strips on trunk.


      Leaves are shiny green alternate, serrated toward the tip, lighter on underside with pronounced veining. White, cream, flowers in a flattened panicle at branch ends with with greenish centers, 5 petals 10 stamens,  grow in bunches at the ends of each thin branch. 


     https://youtu.be/Xv9gCS7c_l4

The first flower has an unusual odor that is sweet, pungent and is said to resemble rotting meat, in dried flowers, this odor changers to flowery. The blossoms contain trimethylamine, found in hawthorn blossom, also forms in decaying tissue. The fruit is a mahogany brown to red pomme, sweet and edible with a raisin brown sugar taste with mild astringency. The calendar in Europe was changed in 1752, previously it bloomed on May 1st. Today it's more like the first two weeks of May. Here they bloom roughly May 8th, 1400 feet elevation in the upper Columbia basin in the Pacific Northwest. 



     The crown of thorns was said to be a Hawthorn, Joseph of Arimathæa who provided a tomb for Jesus is said to have left a Hawthorn at Glastonbury and brought the Holy Grail to the British Isles 40AD. Crataegus spp, this is best time to gather for (W)holy plant with last years berry save. When Joseph of Arimathea traveled by boat with the Virgin Mary, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene he brought the holy grail to Glastonbury. He stuck his staff in the ground and a Hawthorn grew. Lone hawthorn trees are said to be special places where the veil between old times is thin. It's here we come to get in touch and balance, the same effect hawthorn has on the body as a medicine. 



And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon Englands mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

 

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land.

  • William Blake 1804

       Hawthorn could understood as a nourishing heart tonic herb. Hawthorn is a nuanced plant used as a supportive nourishing herb that is both useful as a cardiotonic, that frequently can lower blood pressure and pulse rate and like other Rose family herbs has been noted as supporting the emotional heart. In our ship going, sea faring, traders english language we use words like heart ache, or a broken heart to refer to emotional loss, grieving something or someone gone. Every language has its narrative framework contained in its ticking t's and listed s's. English became on turtle island the ultimate commerce. From buying and selling of things and persons. So here everyone, everybody, everyone is price tagged and set to sell. From the brothel bedrooms of home, to home itself, family all is continuously sold. Nation is transformed to commercial mall. All contributes to a universal loss of soul. Thus rites of passage are ornaments of abandonment. From faceless disposable marriage, divorce, abortion, the mood here is unspeakable loss and mourning for things never been and places never seen as love, family and nation. When one becomes elongated in their systemic disposition of self as a deplatformed non-entity for unpermitted breathing, hawthorn is part of that unpackaged healing. The courage to be a person not a thinged self. To step outside the social credit score within resistance to that erasure and replacement of everything for sale. It was planted as a hedge or boundary, and rose plants with their thorns are said to encourage healthy boundaries between this and that, giving and taking. In addition birds are fond of the fruits and make their nests in the thorny branches, hence protection, shelter, safety, home. So in that way hawthorn is a symbolic talisman of place, of plant and person. Hawthorn is a voice of preexisting condition, the wild, partly tame tawny grammar of healing. 

     


 As a cardiotonic plant a common usage is as a tea or decoction of the dried flowering stems, leaves and flowers, drunk 8-10oz three times a day. In can be FPT 1:2 in 65% etoh, or dried 1:5. It is a good idea to add, 10% glycerine to keep tannins precipitating out, and keep them in suspension.



     It's best as a long term remedy for chronic conditions, essential HTN, s/p MI, angina. It increases contracility, strength of contraction, yet lowers HR. It mildly dilates coronary arteries and can increase blood flow. Similar in the mesenteric, helping to nourish the intestine and be used as part of leaky gut. Due to a high profile of flavonoids and oligomeric procyanidins, it also has a beneficial nurturing effect on the central nervous system. 

     Today, hawthorn is an official drug in the Pharmacopoeias of Brazil, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Switzerland. These preparations are made up of fresh leaf, flower and fruit, this is a true whole plant medicine. The first leaf and flower can be used as decoction, x3 tid or tincture 1 dropperful x3 tid. The flower leaf can be combined with hawthorn fruit gathered in the fall. 

       It has a long folk use in europe and nourishes the BioSpirit. It is well tolerated and has a rich history going back to the Neanderthal juncture. Wherever it grew in ancient history it was regarded as a plant ally in healing. In traditional Chinese Medicine the berries are used to relieve Food Stagnation' category. Berries are sour, sweet, astringent and warming. Hawthorn Fruit is the most often used herb in the treatment of cardio insufficiency, and hypertension, and in TCM treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. As such they could be organized with milk thistle seed in a formula. Western herbalists recognize the fruit along with the flower and leaf. Lately a whole plant product is most popular. 


 Chaucer’s phrase:

"Marke the faire blooming of the Hawthorne tree
Who finely cloathed in a robe of white,
Fills full the wanton eye with May’s delight."

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage

 Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage


Growing with cattails, birch, alder in boggy peat lowlands. On soft edge of a northwest tawny grammar.

Pacific north west swamp wetland perennial with a strong musky fragrance with affinity for lungs, oxygenation, breathing difficulty due to acute or chronic compromise. Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage


Growing with cattails, birch, alder in boggy peat lowlands. 


https://youtu.be/PEsJnfPRVI4


Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage diaries, 2.may.2021 normally can't walk in these swampy but an unprecedented drought has everything crunchy up this way. One of my dad's favorite sayings, the kind of thing you say when you're shade tree mechanicin' and you drop your 7/16 inch socket, or your in an extended allman brothers whipping post and somebody adds that major 7th or your chickens get eaten up by a bobcat,  "cherry pie! unsustainable growth unsustainable culture." so guess we'll see who sticks around and sees this one out. Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage


https://youtu.be/4bqY8EfrOkg



Quamash root


 Camassia quamash ssp brevifolia-- camas, small flowered Quamash Root

Camas/Triteleia/Yucca Family (Asparagaceae) genus  Camassia, southern canada British Columbia, quamas prairie, Alberta, south to Rocky Mountains. Monocot with linear pointed lily family basal leaves.


The genus Quamash is the 
Nimi’ipuu Nez Percé world for "sweet". Flowers pale blue lavender on a raceme cluster. This star-shaped flower consists of six tepals and six elevated stamens, anthers sulphur yellow in this area, protrude from a green ovary. 

     Quamash says spring underground moisture, often near seasonal springs, here at 1400 ft first week of May blooming in an extreme drought year, atypical most precipitation fell as rain in a typical snow season. Every ecosystem has its typical climax optimum areas with its indicator plants. Like the sonoran with saguaros into baja, then more marginal areas into Arizona, with the northernmost eastern stand of saguaros in the foothills of the Gila mountains, isolated stands near Bylas. They are saguaros but they are at the limit of their range and take advantage of dark red brown south facing slopes that hold the heat. On uplifts that catch winter and summer rains. 


 Quamash plays a part here in a tiny Quamash prairie, with saskatoon, arrow leaf balsam root, in a burned over ponderosa pine meadow. Flowers here are more pale blue, smaller and on a shorter stalk compared to the quamash prairie between the salmon and Clearwater river in Idaho. Where quamash, breadfruit lomatiums and yampah created a unique permaculture tawny grammar. Yet it is Quamash and deserves the name.

       Quamash was scattered by coyote after he rescued the Nimi’ipuu peoples creating the Appaloosa horse culture. Which lasted until 1877 when,  In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat, Thunder Rolling Down from the Mountains, Chief Joseph said, "Hear me, my chiefs; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." His final resting place is Nespelem, over the cache creek road from san poil river north of keller. Not far from here before the dam there were salmon in the river. 


Quamash was dug with an elk antler  digging stick. Quamash has an indigestible sugar inulin, which if eaten in large quantities raw causes gastric distress and gas. So the roots were always roasted or boiled cooked before eating. Traditionally it was roasted in a pit for several days till the sugars carmelize. Similar to the communal method of roasting agave in a large pit. After roasting the Quamash was dried and pounded into flour. 

      Quamash root is an elegant edible, with a mild sweet demulcent quality. The root is easy to dig, a light cream colored bulb with a black easy to peel covering. 

Camas Quamash root Lewis & Clark, September 20, 1806, "... our camp is agreeable Situated in a point of timbered land on the eastern borders of an extensive leavel and butifull prarie which is intersected by Several Small branches near the bank of one of which our Camp is placed. the quawmash is now in blume at a Short distance it resemhles a lake of fine clear water, So complete is this deseption that on first Sight I could have Sworn it was water. ..." [Clark, June 12, 1806, at Weippe Prairie, Idaho]



"... they ... gave us a Small piece of Buffalow meat, Some dried Salmon beries & roots in different States, Some round and much like an onion which they call <Pas she co> quamash the Bread or Cake is called Passhe-co Sweet, of this they make bread & Supe     they also gave us the bread made of this root all of which we eate hartily, ..." [Clark, September 20, 1805]

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Hawthorn Lyrid Blessings

     


Hawthorn Blessings on Lyrids, Falling star pollen will activate Hawthorn flowers, Crataegus this is best time to gather for (W)holy plant with last years berry save. When Joseph of Arimathea traveled by boat with the Virgin Mary, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene he brought the holy grail to Glastonbury. He stuck his staff in the ground and a Hawthorn grew. Today we celebrate this day during the Lyrids, when falling star pollen collects on the Hawthorne branches. Say the Señal de la Cruz, 3 Hail Mary's, an Our Father, and glory be, and walk around the tree when gathering or making medicine. You can take a piece of cloth to leave near the base of the tree, or just think about the people being helped by this medicine. The branch, always ¡before it flowers!, is brought near the entrance to the house, as on an outside porch, ideally where you blessed the house with chalk from the Three Kings, Epiphany, if you haven't done so you can take the chalk to the Hawthorn tree, and it's customary to write something inconspicuous on the tree. Note the branch if flowered should not be brought inside the house to protect from lightning strikes, only outside or nearby. 

      Hawthorn blooming lowest elevation here, just budding leaf now, soon to flower next week. The waxing gibbous will set west near sunrise, look for star dust pollen in the east, lower horizon, constellation Lyra with brite star Vega after midnight to early morning.


Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Wake Robin Trillium Soon


 Wake robin trillium soon beth root "....i knew it was true, trillium soon, Wake robin house talk story, Good to see willow and robin knowing Mary is the greening. Wake robin flowered Trillium with 3 leaves, that appears in spring emerging from the snow houses. The wake robin is both wild turkey and Holy Mary, Mother of God, who with gobbling turkeys bless melted snow water, flowing, sheep creek. Turdus migratorius, red chested robin,  buries itself in the snow around Christmas when the days are short. The robin lives the winter beneath the snow. They leave their snow house sheltered by thick red cedar, and meet up with elk and turkey to plan everything coming up in the plant world. 

    Become wake robin singing. During the winter, Mother bless red cedar pine wake robin mountains. 

   Later snow houses become bunch berry or wake robin. Our Lady Good Remedy, good medicine, praying thru us all two legged four legged creatures, birds with wings, those swimming in water. Giving us your heart and eyes...i knew it was true, trillium soon.

In the spring wake robins Turdus migratorius leave their snow houses and as the snow melts pussy willow grow around the lake.

Poleo, Lycopus and skullcap are 3 migrating south plants, who leave for the winter, and will return later to flower in swampy mud around the east end of the lake. Later these three plants will journey south over 2000 miles, walking mountains dream different dreams. Poleo, Lycopus and skullcap bless ancestors buried in this muddy Earth and your children coming from sky. 

      Holy wake robin Queen of heaven, earth wind and wood, blessing life of water. In the Holy name of Jesús + Mary, wake robin and willow. You are our stories. You are our assistance bless the water, our red blood, green blood of trees. "We open mountain lake by opening our hearts. Abrimos el lago de la montaña

abriendo nuestros corazones.." -pm

   Good to see willow knowing Mary is the greening...i knew it was true, trillium soon. 


2nd grade Sister Anne spun a bucket of water. Not a drop spilled out. She said, the reason no water spills out is called Mary's greening love. So i tried it, not a drop spilled out from the bucket. Then a robin sang a song and a wild turkey fanned and gobbled, a squirrel scampered up a tree, blown down by the wind storm, blocking the trail, so i knew it was true, bunch berry and trillium soon."



Monday, April 19, 2021

Saskatoon

 Saskatoon, Amelanchier alnifolia, rose family sprawling shrub tree, used to get lots of attention, still waving, hello stream side


watercourse, open meadow forest interface, leaves toothed on upper half, oblong deciduous leaves, turn gold to red autumn, flowers 5 petaled pearly white sprawling on terminal racemes lushly adolescent disorganized prolific, fruit edible & eatable, manzanita, tiny apple pomme, gathered mid sommer, delightful whimsical supportive tree bush. like many wind waving, hello, hey you high? plants opening up the space, appears quite lonely because having been loved now forsaken, to women bark for afterbirth, stems with snowberry to quick start break a fever, with prunus bark diaphoretic cold and phlu, like recent bathed sweaty lovers sweat. These plants are waving calling, because they meant much, saw and watched us, played with us, now still waiting, sit and talk to me, listening. So many plants waving deeply imbedded in our hearts Saskatoon 

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Dry Crunchy Times

 Dry Crunchy Times


.....at the risk of being random...Well...we're in dry crunchy times...a couple of thoughts, we all come with an expiration date stamped on the souls of our feet. It's hard when sons, daughters, grandchildren make it clear we're no longer relevant. No longer invited to the party and put us in the back room. 

Lysichiton americanus -- skunk cabbage, northern swamp medicine, first wildflower of spring in the north woods, sitting with plants on Wild Herb Ways.

The feminine is dark, cold, wet, moist, forgiving. The root can nourish breathing


https://youtu.be/4bqY8EfrOkg




instagram.com/p/CNUEB3rnsom/ 

     We don't get invited to the wild parties anymore, even though on a good day we could still dance around the fire. Usually they'll come back and say, 'wow gramps, you had a point there. We're having a party, bring your guitar, sing some of those old songs.' Even if it's because our name still is on the deed to the farm and with that expiration coming closer, little johnny or joAnne might get a little bump.

     From working on🔥...the yellowstone'88 fires i first became aware 1st hand of changes afoot. Environment is rooted in place. It's not that there is herbalism in this box, politics in this box, systemic inequality in this box, wild fire and drought in this box. There is a single box and it's contents are mixed and mingled. This was a different kind of fire. Whether the shrinking glaciers in the wind rivers or the contracting retreating medicine gardens in the southwest, there was a movement from moist lush to crunchy dry. Socially likewise communities were becoming stressed like the plants. People tend to forget our lives are twined and spun in a world of wind, rain and seasons within the natural world. Just as the political wars of europe spun to a lung cough, drowning in mucus epidemic 1918-1920, an unseen unknown enemy stalking. One hundred years later we are similarly masked, stalked, victoried or defeated by the invisible.  Like Francisco and Marta of Fatima, we may have seen Our Lady, heard her voice, yet we are stalked by the cough.  



Visiting sw university arboretum libraries, and comparing specimens of where madrean sky island plants were noted in the early 20th centuries to the 2000's, the plants just weren't there any more as described. They were reduced, limited to portions of their range. Still there struggling and surviving though hiding in the remaining abundance. Likewise human communities where people in the past could reasonably expect to thrive were unraveling. People like the plants were moving in small bunches to preserve what they could of their authentic cultural expressions.  The plants already restricted to sky islands, began to retreat to trickles of moist yin cañons and further contraction. 


Extreme high pressure drought like historic late 16th century and the medieval period, between 900–1300 AD  drought had returned to the south west after a brief respite of wet years in the 1980's to severe drought by the decades end. The difference being exponential human population growth, stress on the plants, mining/pumping of ground water. Just as poachers can ping a collared sheep, wolf or griz, people were using similar technologies and data bases with plants. It just wasn't possible for me ethically to gather wild plants in these drought stressed areas or disclose their locations. I remember reading rereading, Aldo Leopold for several years at Escudilla mountain and his account of the last griz shot and killed in Arizona in the 30's, and thinking about these plants in similar terms. 

       In terms of woke for me, it has been positive for growth. In these dry crunchy times, the woke I encountered in the early 2000's, my response went from denial to acknowledging a new generation has emerged and while it's sad i am part of the thesis, and i won't be able to contribute to the synthesis, still it's new life, although a life i don't want to enter and won't be able to enter. 

     All of us come stamped with an expiration date, physical decline, death, which extends to our most cherished possessions, our beliefs. i acknowledge my own dated- ness. I acknowledge the new voices, their concerns by listening. In the same way i listen to flyover geese honking, heading north. Geese like all the feathered flying are beautiful yet foreign strange, undependable yet none the less poignant. I have no possibility to embrace goose-dom and they are rightly so wary of me. As far as the woke, I have heard their generational words spoken for a lifetime. There's nothing new there. They are and have been the dominant culture. Yet I don't pretend to understand their words because i can't. They refuse to understand me on my terms, and i likewise the same. I have to be ok with being labeled the enemy, because they are the narrative. i do consider them friend or foe but hold no ill-will to them because ill-will damages the holder. Best to be wary, aloof. during the elaborate dance for which i am uninvited. Being alone and quiet is a gift. Understanding based on discursive thinking tends to be shallow empire political bound. So i understand by not understanding. I welcome the uninvited, it was what was required. 


    All i can say is the daily living situation across 'merica has exponentially deteriorated especially for young people coming of age. Having lived in 'merica's 5th largest city, in a dry crunchy, pressurized terrarium, there are new voices, avoid or deny them at your peril. This is a time of listening not understanding. The old ways and the real work will be there, some people will come back to it, others won't, a sharpened maul with a good handle, works as well today to split wood as before. The main thing is deepen with plants by doing plants, words will come later. 


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