Garden Witch's Herbal (32 page)

Garden Witch Tip:
To avoid the mess that hanging herbs can make and to protect the flowers from dust and the fading effects of sunlight, try this clever tip. Once the herbs are bundled together, take a simple brown paper lunch bag and cover the herbs with it, leaving the open end at the stem section of the bundle. Now fasten it loosely closed. This way, the herbs are protected from sunlight, air gets in, and if anything drops off the bundle during the drying process, it stays neatly within the bag. You may hang the bag-covered bundle in an out-of-the-way part of the house that has some air circulation such as the garage or basement. I don't recommend drying bundled herbs in the closet—there is no air moving around, and this may promote mold. For more information on tools of the herb magick trade, please refer to my book
Herb Magic for Beginners
.

Herbal Spell and
Green Magick Worksheet

(use this as a template to help you with your spells)

O who can tell
The hidden power of herbs and might of magic spell?

edmund spenser,
the faerie queene

When you compose your own herbal spells and green magick, you may find it helpful to use a spell worksheet, which I will personally admit to using all the time. This way, you are plotting out the course of your magick and getting organized beforehand, because nothing blows the mood faster than having to stop working on your spell to go and gather a few missing components or supplies.

Spell Worksheet

Goal:
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Moon Phase:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Day of the Week:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Astrological/ Magickal Symbols Used:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Candle Color (if you add candle magick):
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Herbs Used:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Magickal Significance of the Herbs:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Crystals or Stones Used and Their Associations:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Charm or Verse:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Results:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Finding Your Path
in the Green World

I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon …

john milton

At this point in your studies, you may be wondering what is next, and honestly, that is completely up to you. This herbal was designed to take a deeper look at botanicals, herbs, and green magick. Looking back at the topics covered, we have accomplished that, but now comes the tough part. You have to put down the book and dive into the gardens and the green world. Come on, you can do it. Get off the Internet for a while, and play outside! Remember when you were a child and your mother rousted you out of the house and told you to go outside and play? Well, that's a good thing. As Witches, we should be happiest when we are out and about in the natural world.

I don't expect you to step out your front door and be greeted by the babbling of a brook and the soft murmur of the forest; I expect you to work with what you have. For example, I live and practice my craft in the suburbs of the Midwestern United States. My family and I live in a mid-century ranch-style house, and there is a busy neighborhood street at the end of my front yard. However, to soften that, there are perennials, shrubs, flowers, and trees all over our front, back, and side yards. We put up a privacy fence, landscaped our little hearts out, and lavishly planted perennials and blooming shrubs.

This helped to create our own little magickal oasis right smack in the middle of the city. I assure you, not only does this green magick work, it works very well. Has it always been easy? No. We have dealt with our tragedies and triumphs, too. Sometimes nature is a bitch, and you learn to deal with whatever dramas she dishes out—for the only thing constant in nature is change, and sometimes you have to adapt to that change and discover along the way what new spiritual lessons there are to learn.

As I finish up this book, I'm looking back at everything my home, family, and gardens have experienced over the last calendar year. And in this past year, I have experienced change to both my home and my garden in very dramatic ways.

A Life Lesson from Mother Nature

In nature there are unexpected storms;
in life there are unpredictable changes.

chinese proverb

The summer of 2006 and the winter of 2007 were particularly tough on my home and gardens. It began with tornadoes in July 2006 that ripped our sixty-year-old trees apart. The storm winds tore off gutters, shingles, and sections of the garage roof. Eighty-mile-an-hour storm winds caused large tree limbs to snap and fall, punching holes in the roof and mashing established perennial beds full of magickal plants, herbs, and flowers.

So did I stand there and ring my hands and cry during the storm? No, I did not. Did I indulge in some squealing? I'll admit to that. When the storm hit, it was unlike any other storm I've seen. A roll cloud came through, and the wind picked up in an instant. There wasn't even time to think
hmmm, this looks nasty
. All of a sudden it was here.

My son Kyle and I were standing in the kitchen, as those windows face northwest, and we watched the storm come in. We knew there was a severe thunderstorm predicted, but in the Midwest that's not unusual. Where I live, everyone just says, “Oh, another storm. Well, I'll just go look outside and see how bad it is.”

Suddenly it hit, fast and furious. This was no typical summer thunderstorm. I wanted to get both of us away from the kitchen windows and take cover in the hallway, since we don't have a basement. Of course, Kyle wouldn't budge. He was looking out the kitchen windows and yelling “Awesome!” as the neighborhood trees started to snap.

I grabbed him and tried to drag him into the hallway. As he is a buff six foot two inches tall, that was not easy to do. When one of our big elm trees snapped and then hit the house, he stopped arguing and then instead grabbed
me
to get in the hallway. I squealed like a little girl—I had no idea how loud of a
boom
that a tree makes when it falls on your house. Even my son was shouting.

Items began to fall off the shelves, and the pictures were rattling on the walls. It was a wild couple of minutes. Then, as quickly as it began, it passed. The thunder continued, but the meanness of the storm was over. We carefully went back into the kitchen to peer out the windows, and all we could see were downed electrical wires and leaf-covered tree branches against the windows.

After a bit of time, we cautiously went to the back door and looked out to discover the extent of the damage. I grabbed my cell phone and called my other son, who lives on his own, to make sure he was okay and ask him to bring us some ice. I knew we would be without power for days. In the twenty-plus years we had lived here, this was the worse storm damage ever. Then I called my husband, who was on an outing with my daughter, and left him a message to call me and then to come back home. Once the storm passed, I called my insurance company, reported the damage, and called the electric company and reported the downed wires—they got ripped right out of the side of the house. Kyle and I took pictures for the insurance people and then called my parents and asked them to bring over their chain saw.

Within an hour, we had begun the cleanup process. It took about a month to wait our turn to have the gutters and the roof repaired. I had most of the trees trimmed up to save them, but one had to come down. The shady perennial bed was mashed beyond repair, so I cut back the broken foliage and took it in stride. It would always bloom again the following year.

Six months later, in January of 2007, we got hit with a major ice storm. This storm was described as “catastrophic.” The weight of the thick ice pulled down even more tree limbs, and those limbs tore down power lines all over the neighborhood. I did magick all night long to keep the family safe. No one slept. We heard the transformers on the utility poles blowing up all night long. They lit up the sky in weird colors of blue and green. Not to mention the sound of tree branches cracking, then the rush of ice as they fell and the occasional boom as they hit the house or somewhere close by. With no power, you could not see outside. It was a very long night punctuated by the sounds of explosions or trees falling down. Fire trucks and the police were everywhere, trying to put out fires and to make sure people were not hurt. Our neighborhood sounded like a war zone.

This ice storm decimated most of the large trees in the area and snapped off huge sections from the trees in our yard, which had fallen on top of the house and punched holes in our roof again. This time we lost power for five days—which is a long damn time to be without power in frigid temperatures.