I am happy to report that I am much better from the cold I had last week. I attribute this to thrice daily doses of elderberry syrup as well as a lot of other herbal remedies. When I first started working with herbs, I was surprised by how effective they were. A physician friend said physicians used to use herbs because they didn’t have anything better. He is very much into pharmaceutical medicine.
I agree that during the early days of pharmaceutical medicine, physicians had wondrous experiences of apparently fatal cases of bacterial infections, where after receiving penicillin, the patients sat up in bed the next day drinking tea and eating toast, clearly on the mend. Sadly, those days are over.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria now need to be treated with a cocktail of newer antibiotics which are all losing the evolutionary race with bacteria quite quickly. Antibiotics don’t last long anymore and are not profitable so pharmaceutical companies are not willing to invest in the research and development of antibiotics. They prefer instead to invest in drugs that patients have to take every day of their lives. They prefer customers to cures.
This leaves us in the clutches of a predatory-pharmaceutical industry that seeks only profit, not good patient outcomes. I began dabbling with herbal gardening and medicines, some years ago, because I thought it was quaint and a bit witchy. I soon changed my mind as I found the medicines I was able to make were very effective and I have been able to help many people when the pharmaceutical-medical industrial complex failed them.
Herb gardens can also be very beautiful and intriguing. The herb-gardening year just started with the arrival of Richters Herb and Vegetable catalogue in my post box. Just looking at this catalogue excites me and I have to start with a firm limit on how many seeds I will buy. I already have lots of plants and a favourite is elecampane. A packet of elecampane seeds from Richters will set you back only $3.75 and you will have this tall stately plant at the back of your flower beds for the rest of your life.
A friend was suffering from a lung problem. She had a strange film forming over her lungs causing shortness of breath to a very marked degree. She went to a physician who diagnosed the problem and said, “There is nothing we can do for you but don’t worry; this is a minor problem.”
As a lifelong asthmatic, I can tell you that not being able to breathe is a bitch. My friend could hardly walk for lack of breath when she came to see me. I thought she was dying. I had just harvested some elecampane roots which are huge like parsnips, and I gave her a root to slice up and make a strong tea with. She tried it and her lung problem cleared up! Surprised? Yes, I was.
Besides being able to treat lung problems, elecampane stimulates digestion and its flowers make a good yellow and orange dye. All that for $3.75! Actually, the seeds will be free if I can only find my stash. The plants grow six feet or more tall with lovely huge leaves and a cluster of small yellow flowers at the top. The plants produce many seeds in their first year. You should wait two or three years to harvest the excellent roots.
Another herb I really love is the elder bush. These things can turn into bloody great trees if you do not prune them in January. I prune mine down to one foot and the tallest was a European Elderberry that was twelve-feet tall. Richters catalogue states that, “studies show that elder extracts provide powerful relief from the symptoms of colds and flu. Indeed, the elderberry has been shown to deactivate the flu virus.”
Richters will sell you an elderberry plant for about eleven dollars. Once established, elders are easy to propagate by cuttings. I have heaps of cuttings and if you want any to start , call me at 355-1088. Just shove the cuttings into some nice soil in your garden, it really is that easy.
Every garden can benefit from having at least one elder bush. The flowers are white and tiny but grouped in large flat clusters and they smell so sweet. Traditionally, they are harvested and left in a basin of water overnight so people can bathe their hands, faces and babies in the deliciously-scented water. The flowers can also be simmered into a strong tea which is strained and an equal amount of sugar or honey is added to make a flavoured syrup for desserts and drinks. The British use the flowers to make a sparkling wine. The pollinating insects love them.
Druids like to do things in threes so my last herb is Saint John’s Wort. Wort is an old Saxon word for plant. Do not be without this amazing, multi-talented herb in your garden.
