In thinking about herbs and preparations to have on hand during the winter months I find it helpful to think about classes of herbs by way of their herbal actions. Here are a few herbal actions to consider when picking herbs for your home winter apothecary and some of my favorite herbs to have on hand (but these lists are not at all exhaustive):

Our grief is a portal, an opening, a passageway into honoring that which we love. Anyone who’s ever been grief-stricken can tell you that grief is an expression of love - the two are inseparable. Grief itself isn’t something to be cured or healed, it’s something to be in relationship with. And, still, sometimes it’s too much. The weight of it can bear down and become immobilizing, expressed as a state of deep nervous system activation, exhaustion, and chronic stress.

I recently recorded a free Community Class on my Patreon Page, Herbal Support during the Covid-19 Pandemic, on my thoughts on easy and accessible herbal support you can be doing right now to protect yourself and strengthen your immunity.

Building the home apothecary with your own hand-harvested and dried herbs is one of the most satisfying parts of home herbalism. Watching your shelves gradually fill with mason jars filled with the year’s herbal bounty provides a deep sense of satisfaction, especially as the wheel of the year starts to turn towards late summer, and then inevitably fall and winter again.

It's currently that weird in-between time when winter is turning to spring, and seasonal transitions are a time when we are especially vulnerable to colds and flus, as any of you who have had a dreaded spring cold can attest too! Here in New England, the weather famously goes back and forth much faster than our body's can keep-up with, and a week of warm weather in March can easily be follow-up by a blizzard.

On May 25th the manager at Blue Dragon Apothecary in Greenfield, MA, where I see clients, got in touch asking if I wanted to speak with a reporter who was writing an article about local apothecaries and herbalism in the Valley.