Make marvelous medicines

Most things I put in my garden died last year. The soil was moist but poor, and the marigolds I’d tended through seedlinghood grew barely an inch when I put them in the ground.

In late summer, I looked out of my dining room window and saw, on my neighbour’s side of the garden, a huge flourishing marigold plant with luminous orange blooms. A bird must have picked up one of the seeds I sowed and moved it to a better sanctuary of soil.

Over the next few weeks the plant grew many arms and many heads, a hyrda of botany. Some I picked to dry, others I left to seed. (Marigolds produce black seeds that I love for their reptilian likeness.)

I have a jar full of orange petals.
They’re the flower of the sun, and are supposed to banish the grey, wearisome winter demons.

Marvelous.

The thing I like about 43 Things is that I want to have something to report back on. If I can’t report on anything, I make myself work on one of my goals so I can.

I’ve been looking on the Internet and compiling a mental shopping list for homemade lip balms. I’m going to make small batches and experiment with oils and ingredients; I have Vitamin E oil already at home as well as Vitamin C powder, but I need to think about waxes and flavourings as well as containers.

I’m quite looking forward to having an excess to give away to friends and family – especially now I have friends to give them away to. In the summer I’ll be able to pick and infuse oils with fresh herbs from the garden to use in the balms. Etsy, here I come!

(By the way, what’s up with this?)

I feel like I’m on a huge creative kick since learning to sew. Suddenly I want to try all kinds of new crafts that I’ve been putting off for a long time: knitting, crochet, making my own cosmetics and even papier mache (random, I know).

Last night I was talking to Nikki on the phone. She told me she wanted to make her own lip balm. I told her I’ve been nurturing a fantasy about owning a shop and selling herbal products, such as body butter and tinctures. During one of my fantasies I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the names of the items I’d make and sell. In my mind the shop was like something out of the Disc World: Dickensian and full of odd items with strange little names. Witchy.

I’ve thought about starting on ebay before, but it was only until Nikki said it last night that it really clicked that I could do it, and a lot sooner than I originally thought.