Miracles Grains, Woodchucks, Morus Alba

Following the signs and symbols found within Right Now

It had been a month or so I had run out of the product I use for my face. I make a blend Rosemary Gladstar has a recipe for in her sweet Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health book. I have been making a version of her "Miracle Grains" for several years now. Using it as my daily facial cleanser. It's so lovely! Incredibly nourishing being able to put plant and earth powder on my face every morning. I would also add it's a very versatile recipe too. For instance today I found a recipe I modified in my herbal journal from 3/22/21. Though it's not Rosemary's exactly, her recipe was my inspiration.

2 cups french green clay

2 cups oat powder/flour

2 T Chamomile powder

6 T Lavender powder

4 T Meadowsweet powder

2 T Calendula powder

7 drops FES - Bach Rescue Remedy Flower Essence (Holy Help from the Flower Clan)

And today since I had other ingredients to use, I made this one:

2 cups ancient healing clay from Heritage store

2 cups oats/flour

4 T chamomile flowers

4 T lavender flowers

1 T comfrey root powder

1 drop Back Oak Flower Essence (Holy Help from Sacred Oak)

This recipe will last you so long! Real life. Years maybe. It fills a 3 cup Ball jar. Like I mentioned, I use it for a daily face scrub but also a face mask, a body scrub, and body mask. In a pinch it can be a fairly horrible tasting tooth paste substitute. I have also used it for times of especially bad BO. Hey, it can happen!

Anyway, so I was standing at the kitchen island making my concoction. For a while I was just crushing dried chamomile with my fingers. Taking their dried bits and rolling them around on my finger tips. Feeling them gently give way to the pressure they were under. Easily accepting their transformation from dried flower to a powder version of their former selves. Is this what Spirit says about us when we are getting ground up for transformation?

It felt nice to stand there and be with the flowers. Feel their presence, their energy, their intelligence pulsing through me. Being with. Being with the making. As I continued I was relaxing my mind and listening to music. Just then my eye caught some movement outside the window. One of the trees was moving. I looked around to the other leaves surrounding and nothing else moved. There was no wind blowing. An isolated movement. An animal was making those leaves move.

So, I paused the chamomile and walked over to the window. Lo and behold, a little wad of fur nestled into the leaves. The fur was perched on the chainlink fence, just below the branches he was seeking. Who might it be? Waiting for the right moment to get a full view, he was Groundhog or Woodchuck (they are one in the same). I didn't know Groundhog climbed?! I had never observed such thing before.

Enamored I ran to my phone and began filming. Of course my storage was full... so I didn't get a good video, however I watched him for quite sometime. He reminded me of a koala bear. Truly. He was reaching for branches, albeit not nearly as graceful as a koala, he reached for them none-the-less with his little paw hands - pands? He was fancying himself a glorious round of mid afternoon, perfectly sun kissed mulberry leaves. Fully mowing entire branches of their leaves. It was a sight to be sure.

Beavered teeth, light colored mutton chops framing his face, mulberry leaf grabbing pands, feet grasping the top of the fence as he made quick snapping motions with his arms toward the branches just out of reach. Reach, reach, reach, reeeech, almost falling off fence to get it. chomp chomp chomp. I'm not going to lie the ordeal was super forkin' cute and I genuinely am beginning to not understand why we are all so scared of nature being close to our homes? Why is that? Why do we want nature to be gone from our homes, but then we go to nature on vacation? We pay to be in the nature we wish we could be in? And we could be in that nature if we just had more trees and plants around our homes.

Anyway I digress. So I moved a little too much in the window and he noticed me and froze. Moments later he was off his perch. The only signs he was there were a little trail of barely moving leaves just above his little scurry to safety.

I walked back over the the face scrub project and said to myself "this was certainly not a coincidence".

Then I had to ask myself, "are mulberry leaves edible?". And sure enough. I looked it up and they certainly are food. Not only that, mulberry, Morus Alba to be exact in this situation, is a staple plant within Traditional Chinese Medicine. Because of this plant’s deep history with humans, it has been studied extensively. Turns out Mulberry is a super medicine for what ails the common Westerner. It's these moments I really understand Native American perspectives of observing nature in order to see what is good for us too.

The beings we encounter throughout our days, especially the out of ordinary ones, are there to bring you a message. Bring you some love and kindness from beyond our physicality. Offering you new ways of seeing what you thought you already knew.

Mulberry aka white mulberry aka Morus Alba has been knocking on my door for YEARS. I have been paying attention to her, however - people really DO NOT LIKE this plant. In fact, it's illegal in some states now. Makes you wonder how powerful a thing is to make it illegal...

Woodchuck came to remind me of Morus Alba’s importance in my life. And so I will continue to observe and experience this plant with new eyes so I may see the magnificence of her accumulated wisdom.

P.S. I used the powder mix to do a mask. I wanted to do a mask since my face needed some extra TLC since I’d not had my cleaner! I decided to use the powder along with a plantain oil I made a while back. I have never used an oil with this scrub before. I remember that Rosemary recommend it using water or oil to mix for the mask. I'll let you know how it goes!

*so turns out for me the oil wasn't the best option for mixing a mask. I much prefer the consistency of using water. If you end up using this recipe I hope you’ll drop me a line and let me know how it was :)