The White Witch or Oops, I'm Out of Vodka Again.

Last month a co-worker gave me some calendula flowers she had growing wild on her property. I was going to dry and use them to naturally colour my soap. Most botanicals turn brown when reacting with lye but calendula and a small handful of others don't. I only use natural colour for my soap or none at all.

But then..

I was harvesting some echinachea root for tincture and I thought, why not use the calendula petals to make a salve instead?

I opted for the passive solar method of infusing olive oil for two weeks, rather than heating it on the stove.

I can't tell you how good this smelled after two weeks, very sweet.

Anyway, I strained it, heated some beeswax (from my local bee keeper) I added lavender essential oil as a preservative and voila, a container of salve. I only made one as I don't think we are heavy users. Of course, I've burnt myself twice since, but that's the hazard of working in a kitchen all day.

For the echinachea tincture, I took roots from a well established plant and chopped them up (with great difficulty!) and infused them in the vodka left over from the previous liqueur experiment, still doing it's thing in the dark pantry. They are now doing their thing side by side.

You can infuse the flowers separately but I was out of vodka so I gathered them up along with some other wild flowers on the property and made a bouquet. Wild flowers resist this sort of thing, as they want to wilt as soon as they are picked but I got a nice couple of days enjoyment out of them before they drooped dramatically.

So, my co-worker S who gave my the flowers wanted to know how the salve went and we were discussing the tincture and the elderberries soon ready for picking for flu prevention/relief syrup and tincture (I've got them all making this, thank you Norma) and she turned to another co-worker and said, matter-of-factly, "She's a witch, you know"

I just laughed but I was a bit taken aback because I had just finished re-reading a favourite book of mine from my teen years, Thornyhold by Mary Stewart, about a young woman who takes over the house of her mother's cousin deep in the woods in England after WW2, who discovers she was a wise woman or "white witch". I loved the book back then and tried to learn all about herbalism (and didn't get very far at my local library - pre-internet)

So there is a line at the end of that book almost the same as the one S uttered at work that day.

The universe is paying attention.

Comments

[Vicki]

Haha. You're definitely a good witch.
; )

[Lynne]

goodness, you make the most interesting things!

[Francesca]

what a super interesting post, Elizabeth! I left my calendula out in the rains, and the petals are probably spoiled by now, but TODAY I'm going to harvest them (I'd read: just before midday, when the humidity from the night has dried off, and the heat from the sun isn't at its peak - but I'm never home at that time of day!!), put them in oil, and hope for the best.