Season of the Senses

 

And just like that, it's August. I have spent the last so many months IN IT. And how blessed it has been. My blogging has, however, taken a backseat, but I think sometimes we've got to let go of one thing so that we may embrace another. Where to begin?

Our meadow in full bloom

You may recall my mentioning crafting a homestead. And that we have, although it's very much still a work in progress. We have been working for the last few years to restore overgrown fields, once thick with autumn olive, barberry, honeysuckle and tied up in a bow of bittersweet, to their native, healthy state. Some very abiding native wildflowers had persisted amidst this bramble that was gradually turning to forest. Among them, lavender bee balm (Monarda fistulosa), wrinkle-leaf goldenrod (Solidago rugosa), common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium). After having the land excavated, as carefully as possible to not disturb these favored inhabitants, I paced the bare soil scattering handfuls of native wildflower seed. This was nearly three years ago, and the fields are now abundant. 

The daisies behind our home (Leucanthemum vulgare)

This year, the daisies came. I remember, as a girl, patches of these on the this very same land, but never had there been a hillside of them. These had always been a favorite of mine. Now curious enough, they chose the hillside closest to our house. I think they knew they would be appreciated here. 

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

After the daisies, the yarrow began to reach for the sky, first with fuzzy white clusters on equally fuzzy stems, then one day their flowering faces were in full bloom, full as the white clouds that passed overhead. What a joy to wander out and crush these leaves, emitting their sage-lemon-eucalyptus aroma, and snip stalks to hang to dry for future tea and tincture. And it was around this time, that I dived deep into forest therapy school. I have long been a forest bather and had been leading forest bathing walks for the last couple of years, but this particular program, I had admired for a good long while and finally it just made sense. I spent six weeks, led by two special women and accompanied by eight other students (all female), sitting, sniffing, listening, watching, and exchanging stories with the forests and fields. By the time, I'd finished the program, I had become a yellow birch, held a conversation with sweet fern, and ate lunch with a groundhog. These were just a few of the highlights.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

During this time, the milkweed blossomed, and its fragrance wafted past our porch at night. Sweet like candy. The spring peepers turned to throaty croaks. One day, while weed-whacking paths through our meadows and clearing a way to the sweet fern and highbush blueberries on the edge of forest, we came upon a box turtle. We gasped in delight and horror at the same time, for how close we had come with our whirring cutting machine. Had he or she climbed the steep hill from the pond below? We stumbled upon this turtle several more times over the next week before it either retreated to the pond or moved deeper into the grasses.

Box turtle - categorized as threatened in Pennsylvania

All the while, the garden flourished with plants long appreciated and new. Spilanthes and calendula, nettles and sweetgrass. Summer squash and plum tomatoes, cucumbers and dill. We discovered lemon catnip and lemon verbena this year and accented these with some lemongrass. I reveled in harvesting the catnip that grew wild on the hill beneath the cedar tree above the daisies. I drank a lot of homemade herbal iced tea.

Spilanthes acmella, commonly named toothache or eyeball plant

I whipped up salves and collected wildflowers and herbs with tea blends in mind. I introduced a whole lot of folks to plants through edible and medicinal walks and seminars but leaned heavily on acquainting folks with the plants through the senses with forest bathing and nature journaling, medicinal tea and wild snack workshops. I loved witnessing folks really connect with the plants. I had no time to write or work on the house, nor did Scott, who was right there beside me working this land and tending to the garden and playing many a show for folks eager to hear live music again. Although, he somehow, still found time to write eight new songs. But he didn't eat lunch with a groundhog. Just sayin'.

Houskeeper's Heal-All salve, available at the Better World Store Two in Milford, PA or just request a tin! This is my personal go-to for dry skin, bug bites and sunburn

A Forest Bathing and Wild Plants Walk with the Delaware Highlands Conservancy

I also attended friend and fellow long-distance hiker, Ken Posner's, Barefoot Academy. Now, he may have called me a graduate, but I think I got a long way to go. Ken has not only has spent a lot of time barefoot but backpacking and trail running barefoot and has miles of expertise to share. I have never been sheepish about walking barefoot across the lawn or dancing barefoot on a good barn floor, but hiking, like real hiking barefoot? No way. We meandered - which I learned is what you do when barefoot, speed drops to a minimum - over gravel and stone, leaves and roots on the Long Path along the Bashakill and near to Gobbler's Knob. What a thrill to not only feel the earth but "see" the trail through my feet. There was so much information coming through my soles that I suspected it fed my soul too. This was taking another sensory connection to a whole other level.

My very pale feet and Ken's well-browned. Take to barefoot hiking and goodbye hiker tan!

Then I got covid. And Scott got covid. And my parents, whom are in their mid-seventies, got covid. All of us for the first time. And all movement stopped. I know today's strain is supposed to pale in comparison to the original. Yeah, well, strain BA.5, is no joke. Fevers for days. Muscle aches that rivaled those after a car wreck. Fatigue. Brain fog. But then, just as I was starting to feel better, what I had feared most about catching covid happened - my sense of smell and taste vanished. It happened gradually over the course of a couple of days, so much that I didn't even notice until I reflected on it. Then it was just gone. I sat huffing a bottle of lavender essential oil to be certain, then eucalyptus. Nothing. I crept out to my porch and pinched off a lemon catnip leaf, then lemon verbena, then white sage. Nada. Worse yet, all I could smell was the sick, a smell that I can only describe like that of soggy crackers. It had already been almost impossible to eat - Scott and I had been subsisting off toast, and child-sized portions of roasted potatoes - but even with my appetite finally returning, a heavily seasoned bowl of curry was mere gruel. 

Bee balm (Monarda fistulosa), also called wild bergamot and Oswego Tea

Meanwhile, as we laid about, slowly recovering in our air-conditioned box, the rest of the world played out. My most favorite flower, lavender bee balm, reached its peak in our surrounding meadows and yellow-headed coneflower from seeds we had planted several years ago unfurled its petals for the first time reaching high above the other flowers and grasses and craning with the weight of its own inflorescence. I know only of such happenings because we took periodically took meanders around the property, wandering about dizzy and hot in the weeks-long heat wave as long as we could muster. 

Yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)

Repeatedly, I crushed leaves of bee balm, and did my best to remember the smell. I crushed yarrow leaves, too, and made strong teas of ginger and bee balm and catnip, feeling only a tingle on my tongue from ginger's spice. Every non-smell I experienced, filled me with worse dread. It is estimated that between five and twelve percent of people who lose their smell during covid, mostly women, never regain it. For some others it returns but remains muted. For the majority of people, it returns entirely within several months, of these some smell within days and others it takes several months or more. All the while, one is not smelling, the parts of the brain that process smell are inactive. Too much inactivity and the brain just stops processing it all together. At least this is what the medical system reports thus far. I knew my chances were, overall, pretty darn good that it would return, but all I could focus on was the possibility that it might not. 

A lush scene in nearby Delaware State Forest

The thought that I might walk into damp woods and never smell the wet earth and pine and green moss again was loneliness defined. That I might never smell that candy-like aroma of milkweed flowers wafting on the breeze or the licorice-apple scent of freshly crushed goldenrod leaves. That I might never smell a Florida swamp or dusty road. That I might never smell Scott when nuzzling his neck. That I might never smell the puppy-smell of Amos. My world would lose all sparkle. The loss of taste would be another tragedy, but smell, that, to me, was even worse. Perhaps the fact that I was still sick made this all the more dramatic, but the darkness was real. I realized how very weak I might be if I were to lose an even more relied upon sense, like eyesight, or a physical ability, My God, if I could not walk. 

Violet leaves - suspected Roundleaf violet (Viola rotundifolia) - along trail at Van Scott Reserve

After some days, my sense of smell and taste did return. To recover from covid we largely utilized the plants that grew around us, sipping teas, dropping tinctures, and inhaling steam. However, it was a few doses of doxycycline that coincided with the return of my senses. I had stumbled upon some scholarly articles about the studies in which this had proven effective and in desperation, gave it a shot. Who knows what did it, but I am now fully back in my body and the world. Writing now about the experience, I feel a bit shallow, for being so terrified and so very depressed about my momentary loss. For I fully acknowledge the lives this virus has claimed and the lives it has forever diminished, and my scenario was but a tiny blip in my day-to-day. Scott has recovered too, and my parents are slowly but steadily feeling more themselves. But it's all relative. Scott and I and our families had been little affected - in the big picture - by this virus, so this experience left its mark. Most of all, it made me value. Now, the smell of fresh cut wood or boggy pond mud makes me smile and the sweet taste of a garden-harvested tomato or the cool taste of cucumber lights my heart. I breathe a little deeper when snuggled in bed with Scott and Amos and eat a little slower, savoring each bite. Likely the illumination, the gratitude that this experience has cast upon me will with time fade. I will again take my sensory experience for granted. But I am going to do my best to keep this recognition close. Our days are filled with so much beauty, our senses the channel through which we may experience it. So, hear me now, I'm going to keep my eyes wide and listen close, breathe deep and walk barefoot, and crush and taste all the leaves I can, with gratitude.

Summer azure on yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

And so, I'll close my wandering post with this photo of a new-to-me summer azure moth, appreciating a perch atop yarrow. I encourage each one of you wander, metaphorically and literally, to appreciate the smallest of beauties, the simplest of pleasures, the everyday joys, for I do suspect that's what it's all about.

If you'd like to learn what herbs we used in fighting covid and quelling symptoms, please shoot me an email. I would be happy to share with you a full list of what we found helpful.