Fun alchemy project of the day -- turning yard waste into Balm of Gilead

Two jars of cottonwood buds soaking, dormant trees behind

After reading a post a few weeks back from one of my favorite bloggers about Cottonwood bud balm, I got very excited, because one of the bane/blessings of our quarter acre sububurban property are our two giant cottonwoods in the front yard. They make growing food in the front yard tricky at best, limited to the southern and eastern fringes and even there competing with the cottonwoods roots. Not to mention dropping all these annoying, sticky buds that get tracked into the house between January and April every year. However, those glorious leaf canopies get us through the summers without touching the A/C. While I'd love to double my arable land and gain several years of firewood by cutting them down, I could never bring myself to do that to such majestic trees. So, I was delighted to find that there's a secondary benefit to them -- their dormant buds, collected in late winter, have valuable medicinal properties.

From a fascinating-looking forum on North American bushcraft, this post explains the salve in more detail: "The buds of a number of varieties of cottonwood and poplar trees (Populus nigra, Populus balsamifera, Populus augustafolia and others) contain a sticky orange resin that has been used for centuries to make a soothing, healing salve commonly known as “Balm of Gilead.” This salve has anti-inflammatory, antibiotic/antiseptic and pain relieving qualities, and has been effectively used to treat abrasions, minor burns, frostbite and to ease the pain of sore muscles and joints. It is also (sometimes known as Black Salve) a traditional skin cancer remedy."

Yesterday, Willow gathered an entire quart jar of buds off of dropped branches in our glorious mid-60s reprieve from winter while I read Blackbringer aloud (I'm always excited to find really good juvenile/young adult fiction.This one's a keeper.) Making the base oil couldn't have been easier -- fill a canning jar half-full of buds, cover with olive oil (I only had first-cold-pressed on hand, so this is going to be some high-end salve -- sigh) and let sit for between two weeks and a year. Putting it in a warm, sunny location speeds the extraction.

We will gather more buds in the next few weeks (we could pull them off the trees, but cottonwoods are so brittle they are constantly dropping branchlets and I'd rather just be patient than deprive them of viable leaves) and follow the Bushcraft forum instructions to make a batch on the stove top for some instant salve (I can get beeswax from a cool little honey shop in town). I figure I'll be able to put it to the test pretty quickly, as I have been burning myself rather frequently, between the bread baking and the wood stove stoking. The perils of pioneer life.

Wabi-Sabi Energy

The current issue of Mother Earth News has an interesting article on wabi-sabi that is reenergizing my housekeeping efforts -- which could sorely use an overhaul, as they are anemic at best, not to mention often laced with resentment and self-coercion, a not very pleasant cocktail, I have to say.  (I can't find the MEN article online but this is a link to another article by the same author on the topic.)

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept -- part asthetic, part spiritual philosophy -- that recognizes the transience of all things and values simplicity, imperfection, intimacy and natural materials.

The article includes a sidebar of a dozen ways to bring wabi-sabi energy into your life, from cultivating slowness by doing chores by hand to clearing clutter, creating quiet space and time for yourself and cultivating soul by choosing a hand-made item over a mass-produced one: "A piece made by hand holds the steady, solid vibrations of its maker rather than those of the jarring, impersonal machine. Surrounding yourself with things made by real people invites a tiny piece of each craftsman into your space."

The tip that I've been having the most fun playing with is to cultivate cleanliness: "An ancient tea master described wabi-sabi as 'putting one's whole heart to cleaning and repeating it several times.' Every time we sweep, dust or wash, we're creating clean, sacred space."

I really like this idea of cleaning to create sacred space and I set out today to do that. I had picked up some insulating drapes for our kitchen slider for last week's arctic blast and the coziness they brought into the kitchen made me want to do more to improve the feel of the room, which frankly needs a major remodel that overwhelms me with the cost and energy involved. But I realized I could make a difference with smaller steps, as the curtains so clearly showed.

After being struck by the silly realization that we've had our grubby white plastic kitchen trashcans for nigh-on a decade and that it wouldn't be the height of profligacy to buy a couple of new trashcans, I spiffed up that corner of the kitchen as well.

And today, I set about a thorough cleaning of the kitchen with the intention to create sacred space. I found new ways to organize tools I used. I pulled myself back from internal grumblings whenever I noticed my inner dialogue going south, and repeated to myself that I was creating sacred space. By the time it was done, I was more profoundly satisfied than I would have been after a regular kitchen cleaning. Now each time I walk by the kitchen, I notice the order and I resonate with the feeling of mindfully creating sacred space. It's quite delightful, really, to feel the energy that I put into it radiating back to me every time I walk in.

I went on to clean more rooms with the intention of creating sacred space. I found that little mantra became a hook that let me pull out of the negative thinking that invariable cropped up ("they're so messy, they never throw anything out, I'm the only one who ever cleans around here" and other unpleasant storylines) and reset my intention to create positive energy in the house.  I'm interested to see if the mindfulness with which I worked, incomplete though it was, will resonate in these physical spaces and remind me of the mental spaces I want to inhabit as well.

Lifestyles of the modest and unknown

A friend of the kids came over to play this afternoon and as we walked in the door I pointed out the feed trough with chicks that we'd just moved into the basement family room from Steve's office, where it was producing too much dust. Our friend asked if she could hold one, so I got our redhead out for her.

Then we headed upstairs and through the dining room, where the table was strewn with clay and painting crafts and flowering bulbs that I don't have enough windowspace for,

 to the upper room, which has our two basement futon mattresses on the floor, where we've been sleeping since the kids wanted to camp out during the almost-great-freeze of February '11 (we were predicted to get 20 below one night this past week, but it only got down to about 16 below. pffft. But the kids still want to camp out upstairs and it is fun to lay awake under the skylights and watch the stars through the bay window.)

I was loading up the fireplace with more wood, when she said to me,  "I really like your lifestyle. I like how you live your life," and I almost laughed aloud, because to me, our lifestyle looks like the aftermath of a trainwreck most of the time. But I stopped for a second and looked at it through an 11-year-old's eyes, and I was grateful for that perspective shift.

It's a lifestyle of saying yes. Saying yes to the kids when they want chicks, knowing they won't stay involved in their care, because I can find where I want them too, and I'm willing to do the work without holding a grudge. Saying yes to the crafts at 11 p.m. at night, because that's when my kids are moved to activity and creativity, after a long day playing computer games or researching things on the Internet, and because I can remind myself that that is what I signed up for with this whole unschooling lifestyle. Saying yes to camping in the living room, because, really, it is quite pleasant to fall asleep to the crackle and flicker of the woodstove's flames, even if it means lugging heavy futons up a flight and a half of stairs and having a trainwreck for a living room for a few days.

This lovely blog post covers the nittier, grittier side of unschooling and it was a good reminder for me this week that the trainwrecked house is a sign of a well-lived-in home and life.

 I told our friend (as I tell every child who says something like this to me) that I understand how she feels because I didn't live this lifestyle growing up either, but that she should remember how she feels and what she wants life to be like and when she grows up and has kids (or doesn't) she can create this for herself (and for her children). And that it seems almost as fun to live it on the grownup end, though it's definitely more work!