When it comes to making a postpartum soup, there’s some adjustments to traditional minestrone:

1. We lose the tomatoes: Nightshades can be harder to digest. If your client can handle them, include them. I love a traditional minestrone. If you are using toms, choose fire roasted diced tomatoes for extra flavor.

2. Bye-bye pasta: Pasta can be harder to digest. Instead, we can create a complete protein by adding potatoes or organic rice.

3. Bone Broth: Quintessential to postpartum, homemade bone broth will always be used over any store bought. The bone broth helps mothers heal and offers collagen. See notes for more on making bone broth or sourcing high-quality broth.

4. Leeks instead of onion: leeks give that full flavor without the digestive issues onions can have

5. Greens: a traditional minestrone can have any greens. For the postpartum version choose spinach, chard, amaranth or some other easily digestible green. Avoid kale for those newly postpartum as it can be harder to digest.

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Yes, one of the benefits of working with this tree is in longevity. Theres so much more here in this 9 page monograph. I’d love to share this with you, when you’re ready.

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Introduction & Listening to the Call:

It’s a warm spring morning when I arrived at Small Town Farms to teach the herbies of Sacred Journey School about flower essences. Although I’ve been to this land many times, and have taught this class before, we never step into the same river twice and I set my logical mind down to step into my feeling mind. The process of making flower essences for me is one of deep spiritual reverence, starting with our energy. I slowed my breathing and took intentional steps on the land. Making my rounds, greeting plants and human friends I haven’t seen in some time, I’m asking one question: who wants to be an essence today.

Whenever we work with plants, we need their jovial consent. If its not a hell yes, its a hell no. There, among the skullcaps was a beautiful borage. I know their essence is grief medicine, but there were many students and only one borage with few blossoms. While this borage was open to being an essence, I didn’t feel the overwhelming yes that I wanted. I kept walking, talking with all the flowers in bloom until I came to the back corner of the property and saw it. A field of bright yellow flowers.

Immediately I started jumping up, matching their excitement. While SJS was on their plant walk, I made my way over to the mustards. This is it, I thought, as I stood among their brilliance. Here was a blooming wildflower with plenty of flowers for everyone to harvest. Like the 01 Magician, I grabbed my cleansed and consecrated tools and set to work.

Dr. Wall Kimmerer on Purple and Gold:

As a class, we stood in the field of mustard and placed blossoms in the crystal bowl. Soon the bowl was covered in yellow flowers. Several students noticed prairie verbena growing amongst the mustard, and in the center of the bowl of mustard blossoms we added one prairie verbena. Gold and purple. Like the asters and goldenrod story in Braiding Sweetgrass. Dr. Wall Kimmerer writes the following passage:

“Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. The human eye is superbly equipped to detect [purple and gold] and send a signal pulsing to the brain. In composing a palette, putting [purple and gold] together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whole meadow, a beacon for bees. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. When I am in their presence, their beauty asks me for reciprocity, to be the complementary color, to make something beautiful in response.”

When we stood in this field under the hot sun, we felt this presence. Flower essences are a merging of spirit and logic in a way I find deeply satisfying. My brain is absorbing so much information, the weather, the land, the plants themselves and the community I’m making medicine with all providing stimuli. Simultaneously, I’m thinking about how to work with the essence. I couldn’t help but think of the parable of the mustard seed as written in Matthew.

Parable of the Mustard Seed:

The bible and I share a complicated history, it’s both an ancestral tool of liberation and oppression. When I reach for my brown leatherbound NIV bible, I’m balancing that history and striving for my own understanding. In the past few months I’ve been making my way through the New Testament starting with the gospels. One thing that’s consistently stood out to me is how much these stories rely on nature.

The parables Jesus tells involve aspects of a pre-technology life that many of us crave (per the homesteading/coop/back to nature movements) such as sheppards, the wilderness, and farming. Take the parable of the mustard seed in which Jesus compares heaven to the transformation of a mustard seed:

31 Creator Sets Free (Jesus) then told them more stories about the good road: “The good road from above is also like a man who plants a single grain of mustard seed, 32 one of the smallest of seeds. But when planted in a garden, it grows larger than all other plants and takes over the garden. It becomes a great tree with many branches, large enough for the winged ones who soar in the sky to find lodging in its shade.”

(Matthew) Gift from Creator Tells the Good Story 13:31-32

31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32 NIV

31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: 32 which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

Matthew 13:31-32 KJV

All three of these versions share pieces of information with the overall message being one of humble beginning and expansive growth. Looking into the crystal bowl of our mustard flower essence, I see the expansion for love that’s possible. Dr. Kimmerer showed us the power of purple and yellow for the pollinators and the human eye. We have a mustard and verbena essence that’s working together to bring us what we want (the bees as pollinators) more than either would on their own.

Bach’s Mustard Essence:

Even the Bach mustard essence describes a joyful and uplifting medicine. In the Twelve Healers he writes that mustard essence is for “those who are liable to times of gloom, or even despair, as though a cold dark cloud overshadowed them and hid the light and the joy of life. It may not be possible to give any reason or explanation for such attacks. Under these conditions it is almost impossible to appear happy or cheerful.”

Mustards as Nourishment:

When I think of mustard, I’m thinking of all the stories above and how wild mustard was the foundation of brassicas we enjoy today. In the doula kitchen, mustard’s descendants find their way into many of our foods. Broccoli, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, collard greens, turnip, rutabaga, bok choy, arugula, horseradish, peppergrass, and sweet alyssum are all brassicas descended from the humble wild mustard (Petruzzello, 2025). For women’s hormone health, brassicas help the body process excess estrogen which Dr. Romm talks about more in her book Hormone Intelligence. My lens of cooking has taught me to see brassicas as deeply nourishing, providing minerals for the soul’s replenishment. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel all of this when I take this essence into my body.

My Experience of this Medicine:

After a few weeks of working with this essence, I can feel this shift in me. I’ve been going through my first Saturn return and seeing my life burn down among me. It’s been incredibly depressing and challenging. I’ve worked with lantana for boundaries and bluebonnet for shadow work but now is the time to surrender to the ebb and flow. I didn’t know it in class when these ancient beings called to us that this medicine would be the one I needed. In my days as a witch, we referred to verbena as the flower that would accelerate spells. In my best Picard, verbena is the “Make it So” flower. In the joyful uplifting energy of mustard, I feel that one verbena expands the capacity of joy even further than mustard would on its own. Literally, every time I take a drop of the stock bottle I sway my hips and dance. This is the power of subtle vibrational medicine working to help shift our energy.

I share this story for the depth and joy of making flower essences, and to encourage you to make and take your own essences. Lean into your emotional body, there is such intelligence there. If you’d like to try this essence, I’ll have some available on my shop or if your local I’ll be stocking this essence at the Herb Bar soon. <3

References:

Bach, Edward. (1933). The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies. The Dr. Edward Bach Centre.

Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.

Petruzzello, M. (2025). List of plants in the family Brassicaceae. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/plant/list-of-plants-in-the-family-Brassicaceae-2004620

How many times have you drank Yerba Mate? What if I told you there was a plant native in TX that was related to Yerba Mate with caffeine? You might start to wonder why you’ve never heard of this plant and I’d tell you many are convinced this kin is a weed. Yaupon is a shrubby wild tree that I’ve seen planted as a landscape plant or growing wild under bigger trees. The more sunlight they receive, the more caffeine and beneficial constituents are found in their leaves. All yaupon will work, and for ease I love purchasing from Lost Pines. I get no kickback for sharing this, and I hope you enjoy foraging this plant for yourself someday. I also love making an oxymel with the fresh leaves and then turning that into a salad dressing.

The other native superstar in this recipe is prickly pear. I write more about the benefits of prickly pear in the full recipe and go even deeper in my monograph. I’m excited to share this recipe with you because I don’t see much crossover between herbalism and fitness (yet, lets change that together). Without further delay, please see our March recipe below. :)

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Discernment told me to wait. So I stopped. I got real silent. Somehow this lead to a social media cleanse.

Like King Bumi says, I needed a teacher who would wait and listen before acting. This teacher has been the rosary. Ancient. Connected. Divine. I’m finding peace in prayer, in slowing down, in resting thru the end of winter.

My purpose for being here has started to shift, too. I desire to share herbal content that is accessible, informative and rooted in experience. What better way to be accessible than to be adaptable? As Octavia Butler taught me, God is change. The spiral continues. I’m glad to be back.

This month I’ll be sharing my juniper monograph. I’m so intrigued by all the information out there on this plant and the powerful medicine juniper has offered to us. For those who support my work, the full monograph will be up next. As always, the introduction will be available to all.

As an update from me, I’m in a doula chef training right now. The sacred work of nourishing mothers has shifted the way I view everyday life. This is the work that integrates everything I’ve spent the last decade studying. From Ayurveda, to western herbalism, to yoga, permaculture and biology. This offering integrates my wisdom as a mother and as a spiritual girly (formerly a witch, presently pagan/christ conscious, but like not new age???). You will notice in my monographs I spend a lot of time on women’s health, and postpartum herbal healing is becoming the foundation of my work.

I am so grateful to every single person here reading these words. This journey is so wild, and I’m so grateful to be here with you.

Love,

Juniper <3

This is your space to ask a clinical herbalist about foraging, gardening and herbalism. I’ll be hosting a 45 minuet live Q&A via Zoom to answer your questions. This is available to paid and unpaid subs, but I will prioritize answering questions from paid subs. Can’t make it live? No problem, I’ll post a link to the recording on this post.

You can find the link to join the Zoom below.

Please comment your questions below by December 1st.

Zoom Link:

https://us05web.zoom.us/j/81376848505?pwd=Q6beI5oQcvjXOroxVSMmWbHjEGxZtE.1

Meeting ID: 813 7684 8505

Passcode: cenizo

*Paid members can find the google doc at the bottom of this monograph. Thank you for supporting what I do, I am endlessly grateful for you.

(Hibiscus sabdariffa)

Mallow Family, Malvaceae

Introduction:

“With its high levels of vitamin C, minerals, soluble fiber, and antioxidant flavonoids, hibiscus tea is one of the most healthful beverage teas on the planet.” — Juliet Blankespoor

Shopping at the grocery store for hibiscus becomes anything but mundane when we stop to think of the story of how hibiscus came to be on our shelves. Known by many names including roselle, sorrel and flor de Jamaica (among many others), hibiscus connects us back to our ancestors who brought these seeds with them from Africa. We know that “both the flower and the people who have long cared for it found their way to the Caribbean as a result of transatlantic flows that accompanied European imperial expansion (Solórzano, 2023).” Meaning, enslaved African women likely brought the seeds to the Caribbean and the rest of the world. Ethnobotanists like Tinde van Del explored the braided hair style that allowed enslaved women to transport rice from Africa to the Americas, proving through genetic sequencing that African women not only carried rice seed but the knowledge of how to farm (Rose, 2021). Although we know hibiscus “reached the New World in the 17th century via slave trade,” I couldn’t find a more detailed record of how hibiscus got from Africa to the rest of the world (Kéllou, et. al. 2024; Blankespoor, 2022). I believe hibiscus traveled via the same clever seeds of knowledge, beading into the hair. From the diaspora we have hibiscus, hibiscus and the African diaspora go hand in hand.

Now, when I grow hibiscus and harvest at the same time as fall marigolds, I feel the presence of my ancestors. I think of the hands that planted these seeds, the collective effort to harvest, and the stories/song/poetry told around Roselle. To me, Roselle presents themselves as a more potent ally than marigold for honoring the ancestors as my ancestors were African. I’d love to see more hibiscus alters to honor the beloved dead.

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Mesquite (Prosopis spp.)

Fabaceae family

Introduction:

Mesquite is a beautiful thorny tree full of medicine and native to the southern United States. The name mesquite is derived from the Nahuatl or Aztec name, mizquitl. While it is commonly thought of as “range weeds” by cattle ranchers, mesquite has a long history of use as food and medicine. Mesquite is often labeled “as one of the most important wild foods for Native people of the Southwest (Sarville, 2021).” The pods have been eaten by many indigenous people as a source of protein and slow release carbs. The mesquite flour was referred to as pinole and mesquite-based beverages were referred to as atole (Wright, 2020). Mesquite wood has been used to make tools and furniture. The wood is also an excellent source of fuel, the smoked wood flavors meats and can be made into a charcoal preferred by blacksmiths (Turner, 2009).

Unlike most legumes, where we primarily eat the seed, for mesquite the most desirable part is the pith, the mesocarp, that’s filled with sugar. The seeds are too hard and require extra work to process into flour. People stored the mesquite for years by adding moisture and creating a block referred to as mesquite turtles. Otherwise, dried mesquite beans can be stored in baskets until use.

Archeologically, we have proof of mesquite consumption via seeds that were too hard to mill being left behind. “Mesquite is usually one of the top three or four plant taxa (scientific groups) recovered from Hohokam villages everywhere,” often more present than corn (Wright, 2020). Bedrock mortars suggest the communal effort of harvesting and processing mesquite in the field before returning to villages. Aaron Wright wrote the following excerpt:

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Prickly Pear

Opuntia spp.

Photo by Alexis “Juniper” Humphrey. Taken in Adkins, TX.

By Alexis “Juniper” Humphrey

Prickly Pear

Opuntia spp.

Cactaceae Family

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When I checked Hood Wellness out from the library I didn’t know what to expect. I like to read by wandering through different portals with no goal but exploration. All reading is a divination practice, literature included. Gordon writes with authenticity and rawness about her human experience as a Black woman in Amerikkka in a way that made me want to get up in the morning to read. She writes about sex, police brutality, the service industry, travel, our history and so much more with the result of inspiring my consciousness. Anytime a black woman writes, I’ll be there to read.

One thing I learned in this book was the term “White Cleanse” in which Gordon describes as a removal of white culture from our attention. “When I did my first white cleanse, I went on a strict cultural diet, only allowing myself to indulge in music, art, and entertainment centered on Black women (Gordon, 2024).” I didn’t know this is what I intentionally started doing in 2025. Yes, all my life I’ve read the works of black people, and for years I’ve boycotted movies that didn’t feature a black main character (who doesn’t die in the first few minutes) but this was the first time I consciously made the shift. Like Gordon, this shift has no end in sight. A white cleanse can be a stabilizing way to take our power back, because attention and energy flows back to our community. It's like shopping locally.

Part of the power of a white cleanse is supporting the women I care most about, black women. “No group of humans is more pressured to fall into the white-passing formation than Black women and other Black marginalized genders (Gordon, 2024).” It's shocking to realize this, but until I paid attention to it I didn’t realize how few black women authors were on my bookshelf. This feeling came over me early this year, enough is enough, I thought. I want to read work that helps me understand what I’m feeling, I want to make sense of the world.

I must be transparent and share that I have read books written by non-BIPOC people, but only to continue a series I’ve previously started and loved. The only exception to this is Becky Chamber’s A Psalm for the Wild Built. Ironically, when I started listening to this audio I felt off. There was a depth or a spice missing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. This isn’t hitting like Parable of the Sower or any of the other works I’ve been reading, I thought to myself. Then I looked it up and sure enough Becky is a white woman. I don’t know how this book snuck onto my list, and I don’t know if I’ll finish it because it's not what I’m craving right now. It's off putting to read books without spice. No shade to Becky, the book is good but it's not what I want right now. It's like asking for a glass of wine and getting champagne instead, both good but one is not what I want. It’s also been a good dichotomy to read non-black lit because I reinforces my desire to stay here where I feel seen and understood.

The secret sauce of black literature is the balancing act of personal story with historical fact. Every non-fiction work I’ve read this year does this, and it’s constantly pointing out the gaps in my education. In Hood Wellness, Gordon introduced me to Claudette Colvin and how she can shift our perception of respectability politics. Colvin was the dark skinned black teenager who refused to give up her seat 9 months before Rosa Parks. Her testimony was crucial in the Browder v. Gayle case, which led to the end of segregation. “When Claudette was cross-examined, under oath, as to why she stopped riding buses the first day of the national bus boycott, her tone and frankness were just as unwavering as her mission to dismantle a racist law: “Because we were treated wrong, dirty, and nasty (Gordon, 2024).”” We’ve always been treated like dogs in Amerikkka. We’ve always had to fight for our right to exist, and reading about Colvin made me feel sad, determined, and more inspired to do this work I’m doing right now. Claudette Colvin sat on a bus exactly 70 years ago, at a time my grandmother was in her 20s. This isn’t obscure ancient history, this is within living memory. Claudette is still alive today.

“In the fall of 2021, Claudette Colvin returned to Montgomery, Alabama, to file for her 1955 charge of resisting arrest being sealed, expunged, and destroyed. After more than six decades, Claudette was still on probation. In her affidavit, she wrote the full story of her experience on that day she got arrested, the impact, as well as her opinions on where we are today regarding racial justice (Gordon, 2024).” I’d like to read her affidavit, as of this writing I have not read it. Colvin’s words “wrong, dirty, and nasty” stick with me. Wrong, dirty and nasty describe much of the politics we're seeing today.

The Civil Rights movement had a lot of layers that I’m still learning to unpack. I’m constantly realizing that I don’t know enough about the timeline of black amerikkkan history. Roots helped me see the changes from being enslaved to reformation through to modern day. The podcast Seizing Freedom helped me see this history, and yet I’m always learning more to fill in the gaps. Respectability politics is what kept me from knowing about Colvin and centering Parks. “The issue with the perfect victim strategy is that it still places people who navigate marginalized intersections in positions that force us to “prove” that we were undeserving of whatever wrong happened to us. It’s also why innocent victims of heinous crimes are portrayed as assailants instead of victims (Gordon, 2024).” This is why Megan’s shooter got away with it. When we uphold respectability politics, we uphold our oppression because we are agreeing to our value being limited by white supremacy.

Hood Wellness was an amazing read. Thank you Tamela Gordon, for blessing us with your work. This isn’t a normal or comprehensive book review, as I’m trying a new formula for understanding specific parts of what I read and sharing about what I’m learning. There’s truly so much to enjoy in this book and I’m sure I’ll be re-reading this again in the future. I want to remember what stands out to me when I read, because nobody taught me this and I deserved to know years ago. I will teach my daughter about Colvin, my made up teaching curriculum would include reading sections of all the books I’m writing about here on Substacks. This and integration are a big part of why I write.

References:

Gordon, Tamela. (2024). Hood Wellness: Tales of Communal Care from People Who Drowned on Dry Land. Row House Publishing

If you don’t have any tinctured now, don’t worry. They will be back every year and I have seeds you can plant this fall. I’m excited to try Juliet’s tonic tincture recipe that calls for verbena, passionvine, calipop, skullcap and rose. Comment below if you want that recipe, and I’ll share it at a future date.

For now, let’s jump into our Prairie Verbena Monograph! Read on for medicinal properties, parts used, contraindications, cultivation information and more.

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Foraging is more than getting food from outside. It’s revolutionary. By disconnecting us from our food, our systems have take control of our lives. The reality is we don’t all need to homestead a 20 acre farm in order to eat local, farm fresh food. Food forests provide more sustenance per acre than industrial farms, yet they require more work in building and harvesting isn’t as easy. I think the pros heavily out weigh the cons here.

While building a food forest takes time, once its established, the forest asks nothing of us. We don’t need to weed, plan mass plantings, fertilize, etc because the forest takes care of that. I plan to write more about how I’ve been building my food forest, but for now lets stick to one aspect of a food forest: foraging.

The oxford definition of foraging leaves some key aspects out, we forage slowly with an open mind. We are more connected to abundance when we forage, because all we can do is look. We can not control how fast the berries grow in the forest, we can not control who eats them before we get there, we can only trust that we will have what we need. Foraging also releases us from needing to own all the land. No matter where you live, you can forage. Oxford left out how foraging strengthens your connection to mama Tierra, and thus your intuition. This is a skill that breaks down the green wall and allows us to see the layers of the natural world (mycelial, roots, ground cover, herbaceous, shrub, vine, understory, overstory, canopy). Foraging brings us rich sustenance that only connection to the land and her people can bring.

Wildcrafting is different from foraging because it is about herbs and medicine making. This is learning to harvest the layers of the forest to fill our apothecary, and thus bioregional herbalism becomes so important. This is another hot phrase right now that essentially means herbalism with our native and naturalized plants. For me thats monarda, yarrow, horehound, elderberry, passionvine, crossvine and more. We’ve been talking about a few in the past few posts. You can read about horehound, ratibida, and mesquite here, I shared a thelesperma tea recipe here, and instructions for making a glycerites here. Start with what calls to you.

Thoughts on Foraging & Wildcrafting:

1. APPRECIATE THE ABUNDANCE:

   For years I’ve lived among mesquite trees. Waiting for the right time and place to harvest. I’ve had to catch myself saying “Oh wow! Look at all that X! I’m sure there’s plenty, I’ll harvest later.” Later never comes, and then the next few years there isn’t the same level of abundance. A quick google search tells me mesquite trees can produce 20lb+ of beans a year, yet I only needed to harvest a few pounds to have enough for me and my community. I’ve learned that when I see a plant in abundance, don’t hesitate to respectfully harvest because the same abundance doesn’t always come again. In that way, we honor the diversity and hard work mother Earth puts in to provide for us.

   

2. SAVE SEEDS!

   Saving seeds means I don’t have to grow all the plants all the time. Maybe one year none of my monarda comes up, but someone I shared seeds with has an abundance. That’s community building because the seeds created an interdependent network of village herbalists. There is also nothing quite like gifting someone seeds, people get really excited to hold something with so much promise. We’ve been saving and passing seeds for centuries because we know the power of a seed and the choice of when and were to plant.

   

3. LEARN BY DOING:

   This one sounds obvious, yet its taken me a few years to get this one together. The more we grow, forage and wildcraft, the more we understand the process of making our foundational medicines. These foundational medicines include tinctures, syrups, salves, fire cider/infused vinegars/oxymels, glycerites, bitters, and more. I’ve noticed there’s this deep joy I feel in harvesting tulsi for homemade medicine. It generally takes a large quantity of herbs to make tea, so I’m learning that everything I grow should be made into a tincture first (except mineral rich herbs, for which a vinegar would do better) and anything else second. This is my path as a clinical herbalist, but if you’re not making tonic formulas for clients, tincturing might be lower on your priority list. I shared the Thelesperma tea recipe because this is a perfect example of a time we would want to make a tea vs a tincture. Thelesperma isn’t known for being medicinal as much as they’re known for being a tasty tea. Reference books and time can be helpful here for deciding how to preserve the harvest.

   

4. TRUST YOUR INTUITION & DREAMS:

   Do yall dream of plants? I’ve found when I dream, most of the time plants are there. I dream recipes and nudges from plants. One time I dreamed I needed to take elderberry syrup when I woke up and a week later everyone else in the house was sick but me. Dreaming is a powerful tool that goes hand in hand with our intuition, and both are kindled by foraging. I was outside in the garden and I saw a vine growing that I didn’t know with leaves of three, naturally I left them be and when I looked them up sure enough they’re toxic.

   

5. MOVE SLOW AND OBSERVE:

   Allow this medicine to take time. I’m talking years. Our ancestors came from direct lines of people farming, foraging and wildcrafting in the same place for generations. Most of us now do not have access to this wisdom, and as we relearn it during capitalism we need to give ourselves grace.

Gardening Fixes Everything is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you’re excited about wildcrafting, foraging and gardening, you’ve come to the right place. Were celebrating slow medicine over here and I’m grateful to share this joy with you. I’ll be offering a LIVE Q&A Ask Me Anything (gardening/foraging/wildcrafting edition) next Thursday from 6:30-7:30. The first 30 min are only available to paid subscribers, and the last 30 min are open to everyone. Free subscribers can sign up here, (passcode: garden) and paid members will receive a message from me with that link. Blessings and gratitude to you, earth angels.

What is a Glycerite?

A glycerite is a extract formula made by infusing herbs in vegetable glycerine. They’re alcohol free and taste like a simple syrup all while being shelf stable. Glycerine “is suitable for preparing extracts of plants that contain primarily water-soluable compounds, and is not generally able to dissolve alkaloids, resins or lipids (Romm, 2018). This makes glycerites great at extracting fragrant mint, sage and rose family plants. Glycerites have a shorter shelf life than tinctures (2-5 years vs 10+) but their benefit in formulas means you’ll never have any sitting around that long.

Shopping for Vegetable Glycerine

Using food grade vegetable glycerine (VG) is important because there are many uses of it than extracting herbs. You’ll find vegetable glycerine in skincare more than anywhere else, and health food stores sell it with their body care sections. This VG isn’t always food grade, so read the label carefully.

I like to look for organic (because I’m using this in my small business) VG free from palm and soy. Good options include coconut-based VG. I’ve purchased this one before. Most important is that it says food grade.

How to make a FRESH Plant Glycerite:

The process of making a fresh glycerite is similar to fresh plant tinctures: use a ratio of 1:2. Since glycerine doesn’t extract herbs as well, we want to really chop up the herbs. Get in there with garden shears and chop! Measure the plant parts by weight and the glycerine by volume.

For an 8oz jar you’ll need 2.5oz of plant matter and 5oz of vegetable glycerine. In the picture below I’m holding 2.5oz of fresh sage and the photo next to it is chopped. I used a handy dandy mason jar to measure the vegetable glycerine, you can use a more precise measure if you’d like, I have had a great run with my mason jars.

Once the herb is in the jar, use a chopstick to get the air bubbles out. This is the same move we do in canning, to make sure we have no pockets of air that could ruin the whole jar.

Label with the date, plant (fresh or dried), and vegetable glycerine ratio. Store for 4 weeks, strain and bottle.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m not making dried plant glycerites. There is more math involved and I don’t want to do that part. If dried is what you have, you can find instructions here.

Why Tulsi and Sage?

Short answer: because I have them. I have an abundance of tulsi and sage (Salvia officinalis) right now, and instead of drying all of it for tea and spices, I wanted to try something new. The fact of the matter is I’m working as a clinical herbalist right now, and having some glycerites available can significantly increase the likelihood that my clients will take the formulas. In a 4oz tonic, I’d use no more than 25mL of a glycerite.

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When I first started making herbal oils, I used the folk method. Take some herbs, put them whole in a jar with oil and let it sit until you’ve forgotten it’s there. While this does infuse the oil with the herbs, the folk method has a lot of flaws. For starters, the time it takes to sit and infuse means I can’t make them as needed and requires some planning. It also doesn’t make the strongest oil. This is why I’ve switched to the alcohol intermediary method.

The alcohol intermediary method (AIM) is fast: in as little as 24 hours you can have a potent oil ready for use. You can noticeably see the difference in an AIM oil vs the folk oil, AIM has more color and fragrance meaning more medicine. I feel much more confident in the quality of the product made with the AIM vs the folk, and now I exclusively make oils with the AIM.

If you’ve never heard of the AIM, I learned that Michael Moore was the first to publish this style. It consists of powdering herbs and exposing them to 190 proof grain liquor for 8-24 hours. The exposed surface area helps the grain liquor extract the potent medicinal compounds of our herbs. The next step is blending the herb with oil until the high speed blender gets warm. This evaporates the alcohol leaving you with a luscious oil. All that’s left is to strain and bottle. More detailed instructions can be found here, or in the recipe card at the end of this post.

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When Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple (published in 1982), her daughter Rebecca was a young girl. Walker wrote that “just when Rebecca would arrive home needing her mother and a hug, there’d be Celie, trying to give her both.” Celie, the main character in the Color Purple, was forcibly separated from both of her children at their births. I can see how Celie would be excited to be around a child, after missing hers by 30 years. I can also see why this would be the book Alice Walker would write because of her own struggles with motherhood. In her essay “One Child of One’s Own: A Meaningful Digression within the Work(s),” Walker opens up about her life as a black woman writer and mother. By doing so, Walker inspires us to continue with our own work, knowing what we face is nothing new. She wrote The Color Purple to remind us that it could always be worse for black women, mother or not.

On being a writer, and a rather epic one I might add, Walker “thought the quality of [her] writing would be considerably diminished by motherhood–that nothing that was good for [her] writing could come out of having children.” For years before becoming a mother I felt this way. I was hurt by hungry ghosts of my own childhood, and feeling like humanity was a burden to the earth. I’d lay down my life to make the planet a healthier being and couldn’t imagine bringing a child into such a broken world. After reaching adulthood, I intentionally dated people who could not be the father of my child/ren, and hence have no temptation to dream that life. These were men who didn’t have a caretaker bone in their body, who also saw children as being in the way of success. This was quite factual to me at that time, and the data estimates that it costs over $300,000 to raise a child to adulthood in the US (Braun-Silva, 2025). As I began to do the work of my “healing journey” I began to confront those hungry ghosts, and create the space in my life to be a mother. Climbing the corporate ladder no longer appealed to me, and capitalism was killing me. Yet enough shifted in me to become a mother.

Typing while my 21 month old sleeps, I can’t help but think of how much easier my life would be without her, not that I would ever want this to change. I think about how I’d love to have more children but mothering feels like burning the candle at both ends in a vacuum with no oxygen. Writing has allowed me to meet myself again as mother and creator, which could be redundant wording as all mothers are by nature creators.

To finish her thought from the first paragraph, Walker went on to say that her “first mistake was in thinking “children” instead of “child.” [Her] second was in seeing The Child as [her] enemy rather than the racism and sexism of an oppressive capitalist society. [Her] third was in believing none of the benefits of having a child would accrue to [her] writing.” The irony is that Rebecca would play a crucial role in how Walker saw/wrote Celie and Shug. Without Rebecca, their “visits” (as Walker writes about the ways Celie and Shug show up) would have been far fewer since they loved to be around Rebecca. Shug had her mother raising her kids, and Celie, as we already shared, had hers ripped away from her.

When she tries to explain the complexity of her stance on motherhood to her mother, a mom of six, Walker’s mother responds with “”you married a man who’s a wonderful fatherly type. He has so much love in him he should have fifty children running around his feet.” [Walker] saw [herself] sweeping them out from around his feet like so many ants. If they’re running around his feet for the two hours between the time he comes home from the office and the time [they] put them to bed, [she] thought, they'd be underneath [her] desk all day. Sweep. Sweep.” This might be a feeling only moms can understand, moms who never get to go to the bathroom by themselves. Moms who understand the main burden of childcare in this late stage capitalistic hell falls on us and asks us to do it freely with jubilee.

Holding capitalism in one hand and motherhood in the other, how do we strike a balance between the family we want and our ability to provide food/water/shelter? I refuse to let capitalism dictate my one life here on earth. The earth doesn’t know how much we charge each other for what she makes for free, she only knows how much she has to rebuild after we cut a forest like a collapsed lung. Motherhood asks of us our bodies, our time, our minds and the lint in our pockets.

I giggled when I read Walker’s take on the changes in our bodies after birth. She wrote that “nobody had told [her] that [her] body, after bearing a child, would not be the same. [She] had heard things like: “Oh, your figure, and especially your breasts [of which [she is] vain] will be better than ever.” They sagged.” I personally don’t care about the sagging as much as the new place for sweat to land. The change to my body that’s been the most frustrating is my new belly. I don’t care about the loose skin but I do care about how hard it's been to get rid of belly fat if only because a waist circumference 35 inches is an indicator of inflammation, the root of all disease, and I desire to be healthy in all the ways (Romm, 2021). Nevertheless, I love this strong body that supports me, my child, my family and my community. This love is key to my health above any scale and any number because it honors my full existence.

Walker wraps up her essay with one final image. “I feel very little guilt about the amount of time “taken from my daughter” by my work. I was amazed that she could exist and I could read a book at the same time. And she easily learned that there are other things to enjoy besides myself.” When I’m in the garden with Magnolia, she’s off picking green tomatoes and grabbing handfuls of dirt while I plant seeds and water. Motherhood has added so much meaning to my work right now. It's a journey that has centered me and directed my choices and my movements.

Motherhood has allowed me to embody ancestral wisdom, for me and for the future. Magnolia will know where food comes from. She will know potatoes grow in dirt, tomatoes are on a vine. She will know how to forage for mesquite beans, and how the summer heat is ushered in by the smell of them roasting in the oven. She is worth all the imagined setbacks, the saggy boobs and loose skin included. My work is to make sure Magnolia does not have to search for her mother’s garden, as I’ve been searching and sharing all her life.

References:

Braun-Silva, Bethany. (2025). How much it costs to raise a child in the US. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/costs-raise-child-us/story?id=120376717

Romm, Aviva. (2021). Hormone Intelligence: the Complete Guide to Calming the Chaos and Restoring your Body's Natural Blueprint for Well-being. Harper One.

Walker, Alice. (2011). In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

This week I went out to Kerville and wildcrafted Horehound and Ratibida. Then when I got home I harvested some mesquite pods from a local park. These herbs are all easy to identify and abundant in the wild. Let’s talk about these plants:

1. Ratibida (Ratibida columnifera):

   The roots are helpful for sleep, the leaves are a bitter and the flowers are a migrane remedy. This method comes from oral history passed down to us from Ginger Webb. I tinctured the aerial parts fresh using the 1:2 ratio of plant to everclear. Save the seed when the flowers turn brown and plant in the fall. You can wildcraft these flowers mid spring when you find them in abundance or see them in your garden.

   

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Other common names for this plant include Cota, Greenthread, or Navajo Tea. I prefer to refer to the genus name Thelesperma or Greenthread. Whenever plants are named after a people, it feels wrong to refer to them that way if I’m not that pueblo (Ex: Turk’s cap), which is why I’ll never refer to thelesperma as Navajo tea.

On the land where I live now, thelesperma started popping up right at the end of bluebonnet season. At this point in the year, (late spring) were seeing a second flush of Thelesperma flowers. They have bright, cheerful yellow blossoms that remind me of coreopsis flowers.

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All varieties in my garden are “repeat bloomers” meaning they flower in spring and fall. As an herbalist whose main goal with roses in harvesting the flowers I prioritize blooms and repeat blooms are necessary.

We will definitely talk more about roses (selecting, and planting) in the fall as now is not the time to plant roses. For now, let’s talk the big three rose care tips for summer: adding compost, fertilizer and pruning.

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