Part of belladonna bed

I am still getting my plants ready for winter and have a bunch of pots to take inside this year. I usually avoid having indoor plants because my house is very small and I have a number of cats who are on the clumsy side. This year, though, I decided I did want some aromatic plants in my work room: dittany of Crete, rose geranium, and a lavender or two. Unfortunately, my mandrake pots are sitting there doing nothing on account of squirrels deciding to rescue the baby roots from their pots. Maybe the squirrels had some serious cursing to do–like on my neighbor’s cats, who keep stalking them.:) But I have a whole bunch of white mandrake seeds ready to put into pots that I started soaking on Samhain.

This year was not the most successful garden I’ve ever had, what with the really rough weather, including hail a couple times, torrential rains, gale-force winds, extreme heat, just the whole gamut of global warming that some would like to pretend doesn’t exist. Well, it exists in my garden–I can tell by the increase in planting zones. I can get away with growing more warmth-loving plants than I could in the past. I did get some nice food plants started this year, like the Cornelian cherry trees, and more currants and gooseberries. And I collected various sorts of seeds to sell through my shop–and a small amount of herbs, such as some black nightshade that volunteered in the shade patch and the mugwort. I also got a good deal of spearmint and lemon balm and oregano and such for my own kitchen. I very much enjoyed harvesting and drying the herbs, and they are so much superior to even the best quality I can buy, that I decided I would grow more for harvest and sale for next year. I am dealing with a lot of shade and tree roots in this yard, and although that is not a very good situation for producing annual food plants, it is fine for fruiting shrubs like currants and gooseberries, which I have in place already, and for many herbs. They are often much tougher than the typical veggie, which is a more coddled critter.

So the lineup for next year, outside of the ever popular mandrakes, is:

1. Belladonna. I created an entire bed just for belladonna plants this year, so it will be all ready for the babies come spring. There are only three of them in there now. I also want to grow the Indian belladonna there (Atropa acuminata), which can have yellow flowers instead of brown (although when I’ve grown it in the past, they were indeed brown–it was just a lot easier to germinate). I’ve had problems finding suppliers of this herb, and whenever I have found one, they end up disappearing. I didn’t want to have to grow it myself because I was experimenting with a lot of food plants, but now they are going to have their own place.

2. Various henbanes. I’ve grown black, white, and golden henbane in the past. I still have a few seeds of the golden left (the flowers are bright yellow with a deep purple patch), and I will pick up some white henbane seeds. These plants will go in one of my two sunny patches in the back, next to the artemisia patch.

3. Black nightshade. This plant and I have had a rocky relationship for the past couple of years. This year, although I did not plant them, they volunteered very nicely all throughout the shade patch, where I was experimenting with growing food plants (mostly bush beans, which did okay but nothing to write home about). The shade patch will be theirs next year, because they have proven to me that they are worth growing in comparison to the bush beans–you can’t beat self-planting. And the herb I have harvested from the black nightshade I grew myself is so superior to the herb I can buy that I just can’t not grow it. Plus I finally figured out a way to dry the berries with the herb without them turning into glop. This year I harvested only a few ounces from those volunteers, but next year I expect to have much more. And I hope to learn from this plant. I know it has something to teach me, something important, because it keeps coming back no matter how badly I treat it. So yes, lots of black nightshade next year.

4. Datura. I grew only a few unmatta (Datura fastuosa) plants this year because I had a ton of seeds of other daturas left from the previous year (and datura seeds stay good for many years as long as they are stored properly). It seems that no matter what I do, I just do not have a long enough season for the unmatta. Although I started them inside and they got full sun, supplemental water, fertilizer, the whole nine yards, the seed pods did not have time to ripen. So I will go back to focusing on the toloache and jimsonweed. I think I will offer small amounts of these as herbs for magic as well, like in 10g amounts. I DON’T want to attract people who are into legal highs. There are a few medieval incense recipes for magic that require datura, though, and I have been wanting to construct J.K. Huysman’s Black Mass incense for a long time (rue, henbane, jimsonweed, and myrrh). This is from his novel La Bas (1891).

5. Foxglove. I haven’t grown this in this place, but I had a nice big patch in my last place, and how the bumblebees loved those plants! I don’t need to grow these for seeds, because it’s easily obtainable, but I would like to offer this plant in small amounts and frankly, I just like the flowers. I’ll be growing the regular purple as well as the white. I’ll probably put these in my front yard, where all the sun is, since most people would not recognize them as a “weed.”

6.  Rowan. I’m going to try germinating a bunch of rowan seeds this winter. I never have as much luck with tree seeds as I do with perennials, but I sure would like to have a couple seed-grown rowan trees. They are darned expensive to buy as small trees locally ($80 last time I found one). Hybrids are less, but I want the species. These will be in pots, since they prefer acidic soil and mine is limey.

7. Blackthorn. Yep, I will be trying these again. In the past I’ve gotten retail packets of blackthorn seeds from a single source in the UK but have not had luck germinating them. I found another source and will try those. Plus I can buy wholesale quantities from them and offer them through the shop, but eventually it would be great to have a couple of these plants. I would like to work with the berries.

8. Rue. Here’s another plant where the quality of the dried herb I can get is not that great. I was getting it from a small grower and that stuff was wonderful, but they decided not to grow it anymore. The stuff I can get now is all chopped up and while it’s not horrible, it’s not that good, either. I like to get herbs more whole. It prevents adulteration and you just get a more powerful herb, because every time a leaf is cut, oxidation occurs at the cut edges. There’s even an alchemist, Johann Isaak Hollandus (1570-1610), who recommends against cutting or crushing herbs when making alchemical products because of how much is lost to the air or by beating the herb. So a whole herb is more potent. Also, I want to keep people’s dogs off my front yard, and dogs and cats don’t like rue, so it will be lining the front walk, together with some innocuous marigold. This will allow me to harvest my own rue herb and rue seeds.

9. Elfwort. I have a couple of these growing in my back yard, but it has become so shady back there that they’re struggling, so I will put them in the front. Typically it’s the root that is sold for this herb, but I want to grow it for the seeds. They can be hard to come by. Also, the sun-wheel flowers are very cheerful.

10. Woad. I have two reasons for growing this plant–easier access to the seeds, and I’d like to try processing the herb for woad dye. This needs the sun and is presentable and not baneful, so it will go in the front. Yes, I know all about how it is evil and invasive; so are we.

11. Weld.  Another one I want to grow for the seeds, and another sun-lover that will be in the front.

12. Wild tobacco. I grow this every year, partly to harvest a small amount of seeds to supplement the ones I buy but mostly just to honor the spirits who enjoy it, like Papa Legba. And I mean, it’s the quintessential shamanic herb. How can I in good conscience NOT grow it?

13. White heather. I’ve been meaning to grow white heather for years, but it has always been a low priority since where I am, the soil tends to be sweet rather than sour, which is what this plant needs. But I’m going to give a couple of plants a try, even if it is in big pots. I would like to be able to harvest white heather sprigs, as they are considered especially good charms. It would also be great to collect seeds from such plants, although I don’t know if they would actually produce white heather plants. Probably a mix of the species lavender and white.

14. Devil’s shoe string. I got some seeds from this, but they can take two years to germinate. What the hey, I will give it a try. Even just one plant would probably supply all the herb I would need.

15.  Vervain. I have grown this now for a couple years. The plants are not that big, but wow, did they ever make seeds! So I am going to grow more of them to get some decent herb. I do sell this herb, but the only source that offers it has herb that is brown and ground almost to powder. I would like some that is more like a whole leaf, if possible. This is one I would grow en masse if I had the space for it because what’s available out there is just not that good quality and because I suspect that this herb has great magical potential.

16. Clary sage. I’ve been getting good harvests of clary sage seed just from volunteer seedlings started by three plants I grew a few years ago, but I will plant some more deliberately this coming year because I like the white variety. It would be great to get some herb to harvest from these plants, as it is wonderful for dream work and not readily available in commerce except mostly as a tincture.

17. Wild lettuce. This stuff has seeded itself so much all over my garden that I could not ever plant anything else again. It is everywhere. I should be able to harvest it for herb next year. I got a good harvest of seeds this year from just four plants, although it was messy to deal with the latex this plant produces.

18. Pokeweed. It can be very difficult to get seed for this plant, even though it will turn up growing through cracks in the sidewalk in a city. It’s surprisingly popular. I have one plant struggling along in a shady section, so I’d like to start a couple more to put in a brighter area and get seeds from.

19. Wild white and purple petunias. These are the ancestors of common petunias, and I love them. They are prolific seeders. I have been growing some in pots and some in the ground. I especially favor the wild white ones, Petunia axillaris, because its scent at night is so rich. I am sure this must have a tradition of magical use, but I have not been able to uncover anything. I am going to keep growing it until I get to know its spirit. It feels like a friendly plant. Not so much the purple ones. They have a weird smell.

20. Giant Chinese lanterns. I have not been able to get seeds of the giant variety for a while, only the regular size. Plant varieties go in and out of availability with seed wholesalers like teenage fads. I tried getting a small packet to grow my own last year, but it turned out they had none, so I will try again this year.

And that’s pretty much it. For my own self, I’ll be growing ground cherries, more currants and gooseberries, shallots in my neighbor’s sunny plot, a few snowpeas and pole beans, White Queen tomatoes (very creamy Victorian mater), and my own project just for the halibut, species roses from seeds. I have a now very large rose bush that I grew from seed I started about 5-6 years ago, and I think it’s time to move on to other species. Plus I will grow some more herbal teas, like more lemon balm, spearmint, chamomile, and some ones I haven’t tried growing, like New Jersey tea and bee balm.

Variegated woodland nightshade

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been working on orders and trying to get the garden sorted out, but I hope to remedy that. I got most of the rest of the seedlings potted up this past week, but I still have much to do, including seeding all the bush beans and cukes. Yes, I am behind as usual, although probably not as far behind as I normally am this time of year. No matter how much I plan, the rush of spring always blindsides me. And I have to admit I got a bit discouraged after the hail and gale-force winds followed by unseasonable heat smashed a number of my plants, but since we are forecast to have similar hail and gale-force winds this afternoon, I thought I better take some pictures while my plants were still alive and out there. So here’s a little garden tour.

To the left is my single variegated woodland nightshade plant, which surprisingly made it through last season, when it arrived my garden covered with spider mites. It made one or two berries, but I left them alone. I didn’t have much hope for it making it through the winter, but it did, so now I do not feel insane to hope that this year I can get a few seeds and that those seeds will produce variegated plants. Not sure about that. This might be the kind of thing that has to be propagated vegetatively (by cuttings) to preserve the variegation, but I will find out.

The Scullery Maid has pics of a very hefty clary sage. Mine are retiring in comparison. One thing I love about this plant, though, are the wrinkled leaves, which remind me of the skin on the back of the hand of an elder. I have several clary sages with white bracts I hope to collect seed from–these reseeded from my single white clary sage last year–and then one of the more traditional violet bract types that just decided to grow where it was. For some reason the white variety is known as “Vatican White,” to which I can only reply, “Why?” But what the hey, you cannot keep a great plant down with a silly name. I highly recommend clary sage to any witch or mage who would like to investigate dreaming as a magical and spiritual tool and who would like to use a plant to help in that. Clary sage is a pleasant and non-toxic dream enhancer with none of the exoticism of stuff like diviner’s sage, but it’s a lot easier to grow and to my mind, far more subtle. Tincture the flowering tops in brandy and then try a tablespoon in a small wineglass of warm water before retiring. Interesting.:) Do watch out for it in combination with alcohol, though, as it potentiates alcohol’s more noxious effects greatly. Remember, it predates hops as a beer additive.

The feverfew looks so nice in this, its second year, that I wish I had planted it out front to impress the witch-hating (and maybe world-hating) kook across the street, whom I suspect has been coming over under cover of darkness to pour who-knows-what over my plants. The tiny daisy like flowers are very cheerful, and altogether this is a neat plant with little visible predation by bugs. I grew it to collect the seeds and also just to see it in its full glory in person. It’s a favorite for migraine sufferers and is good for rheumatism and general inflammation. Unlike many herbs, it is usually used fresh. Pulp fresh leaves 1:5 with brandy, macerating for a week for a tincture. Fresh leaves are also good as a poultice on aching muscles.

Jostaberry

Not far from the feverfew is the Scandhoovian jostaberry that I just put in this spring. It looks like it’s settling in nicely with its companions, barely visible, a good-sized stand of motherwort, which I found growing back there when I moved in and which I have encouraged in the manner of the people who originally lived here–simply by weeding around them and giving them a more favorable aspect. They have repaid this small attention by greatly expanding their territory and becoming much more healthy. This year I expect to collect seed from them instead of buying in motherwort seed.

Blood-Drop Emlets, not very bloody

One of the most cheerful plants that have grown for me this year is Mimulus luteus ala blood-drop emlets. This is a Chilean flower that became popular in British gardens many years ago. Because I neglected it, it did not reproduce is sufficient quantities to make seed harvest a viable enterprise last year. I left the plants to themselves, and they reseeded like crazy. The flowers, as you can see, do not sport the nice big blood drops, only a tiny spray of blood mist, but they are handsome nevertheless, with nice-sized golden yellow snapdragony sort of  flowers and thick leaves. These very healthy looking plants are favored by bees.

Last but by no means least in the back is the return of the Black Toad, which got mad at me for ripping out all its comrades last year after my unpleasant experience with its berries and with just how obnoxiously it was colonizing the entire back yard.  I started more seeds this spring, but not a one of them germinated. I bought new stock but haven’t had time to plant them. I also didn’t have time to plant the leafy greens in the shade plot. By the time I got around to looking it over again, the Black Toad had decided to put in an appearance there all along the path that I made for myself at the very beginning of the season. I think there is something nicely metaphorical about Black Toad growing along the path of my shade plot, no? I thanked the plant’s spirit for deigning to return after such rude treatment, and I very much look forward to trying once again to work with this plant.

Before I went to bed, I took a tablespoon of the tincture in a four ounce glass of water. It tasted a little soapy and left a bit of a tingle on my tongue. I asked clary sage to teach me, and I lit some incense to Hermes and asked him to guide me.  Went to bed.

I had three dreams. All were clear and none were feverishly overrun with images, which has been the case when I have worked with mugwort. The first was distinguished by a brilliant emerald green color which appeared intermittently. The third I remember nothing of except the scrap of music which played repeatedly. This happens to me often in dreams. It was the second dream that has been startling.

In part of the second dream, I found myself sitting in a sort of chapel. There were others there, more towards the front. It appeared to be some kind of study class led by an older woman, rather bony and ill-tempered. She scowled at me because she recognized that I did not belong there, so to avoid her wrath and get my bearings, I pretended to be studying also and looked down at the books on my lap. They were two Bibles, both open and resting on top of the other. These were not like Bibles I had seen before. The one on top was open to the Book of Daniel, which I must confess I have never read. All I know about it is the stories, mostly from either kid’s pictures of Daniel in the lion’s den (see the print I remember from childhood) or from movies such as Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, which as I recall protrays the Fiery Furnace episode (which I never knew was from Daniel until today). I likewise did not know that this book is a favorite of some Christians, who enjoy interpreting it as predictive of the future, parsing out which metal of the statue in the dream represents which historical kingdom, and of course using stuff in it to validate Jesus as God. It is not very important in Judaism, stuck in the biblical hinterlands between Esther and Ezra.

In the dream, I could see the words clearly on the page, which was in English. I focused on the lower right-hand corner of the page, which was where the second chapter began. At the head of each chapter, this Bible gave a series of words that were used as verbs in the Hebrew text (which was not presented). The words were transliterated from Hebrew letters into Roman letters in caps. One word I remember was something like “MATOUION.” I didn’t recognize this word as Hebrew, but I thought at least they are acknowledging this is a Hebrew text. What was striking about this dream was that I could see the words clearly and that many of them were in English. Usually in my dreams, if text is involved, it is in another language, especially Russian (which I know, but it is always some word I don’t recognize!), or if it is in English, it is all jumbled with letters of different sizes and colors. So this was odd for its clarity, although I did not remember anything it said in English when I work up.

Ishtar Gate, constructed in Nebuchadnezzar's day

This morning I decided to look at the Book of Daniel, second chapter. Here’s the first line of that chapter: “In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream; his spirit was agitated, yet he was overcome by sleep.” The king (ruler of Babylon) orders his “wise men”–magicians, exorcists, sorcerers, and Chaldeans–to prove their talents by telling him what his dream was and then to interpret it for him, but none of them can do it, and they even say that no one can do that except the gods. The king decides he’ll just execute them all as frauds. Among them are three wise men in training, Judeans who were captured and kept in the king’s palace to be educated and form part of his service during the Babylonian Captivity. One of them, Daniel, is able not only to tell the king what the dream was but to interpret it for him. It is a dream of the future, one about the destruction of various kingdoms. These are represented by a statue made of different metals (which reminded me very much of alchemy). The king spares all the wise men, of course.

A couple of interesting things about this text. One, Daniel asks for help from God to learn the dream and what it means, but he uses an odd phrase:  ELH ShMYA [Elah Shmayah], which translated in the JPS Tanakh as “God of Heaven.” I don’t think I have seen this particular phrase used for God in the Bible before, although maybe I was just not paying attention. I know of various names for God in the Hebrew Bible: El, El Shaddai, YHVH, El Elion, Eieh, and Elohim, but not this phrase. I will have to look into it further. [Turns out it's Aramaic and only occurs in three books - Ezra, Daniel, and Jeremiah]

I also noticed that in the first chapter, Daniel and his friends are to be fed on the king’s food and wine, but he asks that they instead be given legumes and water for their food and drink that they not “defile” themselves. This is interesting for me, since I have been giving much thought lately to diet.

I did not find anything like the word “MATOUION” in this section. I thought it was Greek, but apparently it was the Latin name of a town in Scotland north of the Antonine Wall. I wonder if this was anywhere near Nairn, which is the area where Isobel Gowdie lived. Weird. I am not sure if the word has significance. I think I was only meant to look at The Book of Daniel, which, it turns out, centers on dream visions and prophecy.

As you can imagine, I will be working with clary sage further.:)