Well in animal news, the kittens have turned one year old! Happy Birthday to Lilac, Mugwort, Earl Jr., and Cloudpaw! This is Mama Peppermint
Remember when I found her and all the herbal helpers I used to help her get well from all her dog bite injuries? It makes my heart sing to see her so happy, healthy and gorgeous these days:) Mugwort is hanging out with some herbie books and Comfrey Fairy
Lilac was sleeping on the back of the sofa, so this is her “I just woke up” look!
Cloudpaw was so tiny for so long, and also had some medical problems I helped with herbals. He is a fine, healthy fellow now!
He doesn’t look like it in this picture, but Earl Jr. is a huge kitten! I call him Mr. Pink Nose all the time:) lol!
We have a stray mama cat and her 3 kittens living in the gardens now :( I am trying to tame them down enough to even touch. This picture was taken through the window
At least I thought there were three kittens. This morning I saw the fourth! Yikes! Another instance where someone down the line didn’t tend their cat(s) properly, and now I must.. sigh…Other pet news, Max and Ruby were parents again. This time 15 ducklings. Luckily, we have found homes for all the little ones
Been super busy between the granchildren out of school for the summer and trying to do a little spruce up around here. This freshly painted garage wall in the next picture took me a couple of days. The house next door to us is one of our rentals, and its garage wall facing my gardens was terrible looking, so I tackled that over several days. 
Looks so much cleaner! In that photo our a rose of sharon, elderberry, joe pye weed, pleurisy root, feverfew, milkweed, valerian, and daylilies. Maybe click to enlarge to see better:)Been scraping and getting ready to paint two more of those metal chairs and one metal double glider. Redid an old metal milk can, but forgot to take a picture of that. Going to use it as a table between the two finished chairs. In the queue, is scraping and repainting some windows… seems it is a painting kind of year! Do you like the color I did the swing in?
In this side garden are lemon verbena, pineapple sage, 4 roses, red clover, rose of sharon, daylilies, comfrey, lemon grass, beebalm, echinacea, nasturiums, primrose, hollyhocks and more. I will have to do just a plant post soon:)We did take time to do some jug fishing recently with brother Eric. Jug fishing is fun. You just tie a line onto a jug that will float and throw it out. You will see it take off when a fish hits it
Do remember I have two giveaway drawings going until the 27th. One on the guest post by Anke Bialas, on making a Stillroom book, and the other on my book review of Homemade Health!Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottagesxx
The lovely Ali English, of Eldrum Musings blog, is hosting this month’s party. Thank you Ali!My form of practicing herbalism is very personal indeed. Those of you who follow this blog know, I do very little that doesn’t involve my grandchildren. It has been my greatest joy in life to help guide them down the herbal/wild foraging/gardening/ nature loving path, and I hope these early adventures will give them a life time of joy, and good health!Lily (age 7) and Dylan (age 4) helping make this years elderflower cordialAlmost everyday we explore together, our world. We take walks and it is a great joy to hear the children naming so many plants and whether they are edible or we can use them to help us stay healthy or feel better if we don’t feel so good. Dylan and his chickweed garden
My own herbal journey started rather late in life. The year my third child was born, and I turned 21, Jean Auel wrote the book Clan of the Cave Bear. The setting is 30, 000 years ago and throughout this well researched book, there are many references to plants as both food and medicine. I was intrigued! I was taught while a young girl, growing up on a Midwest farm, some of our local wild edible plants and mushrooms, but I had nothing in my background about using plants as medicine. Herbalism was just beginning a resurgence her in the US, and even though we were starting to have some stores that carried some herbal teas and such, there was really no one in my area to help me learn more… I asked around our town if there was any of the older folks known for using plants as medicine, and got dribs and drabs of info, but no one alive to talk to…. Fast forward to my forties and I had just learned about Healing Touch, which is similar to Reiki, and had began taking weekend classes to learn it. My mother had been diagnoses with cancer and I became a caregiver. Any of you who have been there know what a soul wrenching experience it is to tend a loved one with a serious illness, especially one that ends in death. My brother Eric and I discovered the China Bayles mystery series of books by Susan Wittig Albert. This series of books is centered around the lead character, China Bayles, and her herb shop. During this time of sorrow, and feelings of helplessness, Susan rekindled my intrigue for herbal medicine, and my mother’s illness provided the fuel. I also credit Susan with saving our sanity during this time, as there is no better medicine for sorrow than to be looking in a forward direction, and her China Bayles books gave me a new learning direction.. herbalism.Since then, I have weaved the world’s of being a grandmother, a beekeeper, healing touch practitioner, and herbologist into my daily life. I do lots of reading of some of the great herbalist’s and ethnobotanist’s books, essays, and other shares. I have networked with many lovely, sharing herbalist around the world and learn daily. I meditate with the plants and use my senses I refined through learning Healing Touch to pick up the vibrations of my green allies and learn from them. I experiment, taste, touch, smell, look, look closer, and watch the changes through the seasons. Whereas I feel many times I was born in the wrong century, I am very grateful to having been born during a time when I can easily communicate with my herbalist friends to ask questions, compare ideas, and to learn from. I am grateful to online book sellers where I have been able to buy books that have explained to me and taught me much of the historic, time honored uses of plants. If I would have had all these more modern means of learning back in my early twenties, I would have been able to share these things with my own children then! Now, I have to smile as I watch my grandchildren teach them :) My personal herbalism is all about taking back my herbal heritage I earned as a human on this planet and sharing it with my grandchildren, or anyone else who cares to learn with me. And using this knowledge to help steward our planet, and help keep healthy, help with diseases or injuries myself, my loved ones, or my friends and pets.Lily playing animal vet. I so enjoyed listening to her play this game with Dylan. They used elderflower, linden flower, peppermint, plantain and yarrow during this game:) 
Dylan harvesting dandelions
By the way, it is not too late to get in on the drawing for a jar of my rose cream. Just follow this link to read my review of Anke Biala's new book Homemade Health and leave a comment before the 27th!Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xx
It seems the honey worked well as the rooting medium I talked about earlier. It feels as if it is rooting and we have a bloom!
And look to the right. I found an European Ginger plant at a garden club sale. Anyone want to tell me about the care, growing and uses of this plant, I would appreciate it:)Last night we had a joint birthday party for my daughter Michelle, whose birthday was Saturday, and my grandson Breven, whose birthday was yesterday. He turned 11. Happy Birthday Breven! I love you! Sorry the pictures didn’t turn out too good:(
I made Michelle’s cake in the shape of a daisy, her favorite flower
Last night my husband Gerald brought me home flowers from a Catalpa tree! Aren’t they gorgeous? And heavenly scented! How sweet he is!
And today, I got a phone call about another swarm. This gentleman took my camera and took some pictures of me catching it! Gerald was home so he helped me by bringing the big ladder and steadying it for meAnd my hubby helping me! Glad he held the ladder as it was the tall one! 
When I got the call to retrieve this swarm, I went to the bee house to get my equipment together and I had noticed that the 2nd swarm I caught, hive looked very quiet, so I suited up and checked and sure enough, they had left! Guess they weren’t happy at Comfrey Cottages! lol! Worked out fine though, as I just hived this one in their box. Hopefully they will like it here. The first swarm is still industrious and seems quite settled, and Eric says the third swarm we hived seems happy at his house. Gotta run now. Someone called about another swarm while I was creating this post!Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx
Thirty three years ago, I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl! Today my brother Eric and I took her to Her Majesty’s English Tea Room at Fairchild’s in Dunlap, Illinois, to celebrate her birthday.
Not only is it a delightful tea room, but it also is a beautiful store to shop at, with many wonderful things and darling decorations. This was a taxi and one of the teas party’s they offer, can actually be served in the taxi! We are considering that for Michelle’s birthday next year. More pictures of the taxi…Eric had a dream come true, and got to pose with Prince William and Kate.. (look at that adorable little flower fairy apron in the foreground!)
The tea, itself, was delicious and the presentation was gracious and elegant. Michelle and I had lovely tiara’s and Eric had a coronet.At the end of our wonderful tea, Michelle was presented with a meringue cake and a little singing bear:)
Happy Birthday Michelle! I love you so very much! We also stopped at a plant nursery and saw some gorgeous things and sweet fairy gardens, but I will save those for a different post and share about the swarm instead! We had no sooner than got home and I got a call to come get a swarm. I called Eric, who is crazy and helped catch this swarm in his flip flops, shorts and sleeveless shirt, (see I have been telling you swarms are gentle!). The hive had been in this guys tree but he had thrown firecrackers and I suspect other things from the amount of injured bees on the ground when we got there. Anyway, the bees had came and settled on his table umbrella and it took us awhile to figure out the queen was on the inside of the umbrella!When we got the hive to Eric’s house and reopened it to put in the rest of the frames, the bees were making a bridge between the frames we had in there. I thought you might enjoy seeing this phenomenon.
Eric and the new hive!!
Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xx
I got a phone call the other morning that made my heart sing! A man in town had a bee swarm in his yard and was asking me to come fetch it! Free bees! It is hard to see it well in this picture, but that dark spot is a the swarm!
Luckily my son Tommy was home, so he came and helped me:) And took this picture of me
Swarms are extremely gentle. They keep balled up around their queen, while scout bees fly off looking for a new home. Later, I went back to where I got this swarm and found a cluster of scouts who had returned to where there swarm had been. Imagine if you had told your family you would go off in search of a new home and when you returned, they were gone! So sad to even think about so….
I went and retrieved them and reunited them with their family:) You see the queen’s scent was still there, and they would have just stayed right there until they died! I thought these little sacred lived deserved being cared for and brought to their family:)I have a friend named Jim, who is in my beekeeping group. He bought a package of bees and I went to help him hive them. Package are one way you can buy bees. They come in a screen box, which has a sugar water can inserted in it to keep the bees fed while in transit. The queen is in a tiny screen box inside this package. One end of her cage is plugged with a candy, that the bees will eat and eventually release her.
Jim had his beehive all put together and ready. We just removed some of the center frames and then poured the bees in, after removing the sugar feed you can see in the center of the top of the bee cage. It looks like a can of veggies or something..
This is the queen cell, Jim is holding. He used the hive tool corner to break up the candy plug just a little bit more. We hung this cell between some frames and soon the workers will have ate out the plug and released the queen
The bees that didn’t pour/shake out were left sitting right outside the entrance. It wasn’t long until they marched out and joined the rest of the hive. We got the veg garden tilled this weekend
We garden at my nephew Scott and his wife Dawn’s house. Scott was so patient teaching Grandson’s Evan and Breven how to run the tiller
Gerald and I went to the Civic Center in Peoria to see Red Green this weekend. Visit the link if you are unfamiliar with this comedian. Gerald has been a great fan of his for years so he had a great time:)
We had one bummer this week though. We found a woodpecker in our yard that had a broken wing. We kind of guess it was probably hit by a hawk. We were going to try and heal and rehabilitate it to re-release it.. but it passed away within an hour of us finding it:( Must have been hurt worse than we could tell, although Gerald didn’t hold out good hopes for a full recovery to its wing to begin with..
On an up note…. Gerald gave Dylan his very first duck call. Dylan is always wanting me to drive Papa’s truck, as Gerald has duck calls hanging from the rearview mirror. Well, now he has his own:)
Dylan had some sort of tubing that he was forever using to try and holler at the geese in the fields on the way to school in the morning. So cute, he will roll his window down and just start blowing and blowing this homemade thing trying to get their attention. When I told Gerald, he thought it was time he had a real one:) Quite the big little man now!We went to the river this week, and I got some of the herb gardening done, but I should save those things for another post as this one has got quite long!Herbal and Honey Hugs to all of you who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx
Remember when I found her and all the herbal helpers I used to help her get well from all her dog bite injuries? It makes my heart sing to see her so happy, healthy and gorgeous these days:) Mugwort is hanging out with some herbie books and Comfrey Fairy
Lilac was sleeping on the back of the sofa, so this is her “I just woke up” look!
Cloudpaw was so tiny for so long, and also had some medical problems I helped with herbals. He is a fine, healthy fellow now!
We have a stray mama cat and her 3 kittens living in the gardens now :( I am trying to tame them down enough to even touch. This picture was taken through the window
Been super busy between the granchildren out of school for the summer and trying to do a little spruce up around here. This freshly painted garage wall in the next picture took me a couple of days. The house next door to us is one of our rentals, and its garage wall facing my gardens was terrible looking, so I tackled that over several days. 
Looks so much cleaner! In that photo our a rose of sharon, elderberry, joe pye weed, pleurisy root, feverfew, milkweed, valerian, and daylilies. Maybe click to enlarge to see better:)
In this side garden are lemon verbena, pineapple sage, 4 roses, red clover, rose of sharon, daylilies, comfrey, lemon grass, beebalm, echinacea, nasturiums, primrose, hollyhocks and more. I will have to do just a plant post soon:)
