Some thoughts…
In Yorkshire the hedges are bursting with ripe blackberries & elderberries. There is such an abundance of berries this year that I’ve been utilising the gift of our hedgerows & getting creative with my folk medicines. For me, working with plants whether it be through pigment or medicine is a way of deepening my connection & understanding of plants & my relationship with them as a herbalist. I feel bramble is a plant we all too often take for granted, a plant that is so familiar, we often overlook it. Familiarity is a topic I’ll write more about in another post, but for now, what I’d like to say is that it’s an area of interest. In an attempt to reverse the habitual pattern of overlooking that which becomes familiar, I’ve been making more than just my regular blackberry tinctures & vinegars. I’ve been combining. Meditating. Being with plants I thought I knew.
There’s something quietly unruly about this act. An antidote to the instantly gratified consumer mindset. In my plant practice I’ve been coming back to the old favourites, spending time with them, hanging out with them- as us plant people would say. I’ve been honing in on the abundant, the plants we all know & love & exploring the field of the familiar.
In his book ‘Anam Cara’ John O’Donohue writes:
“Behind the facade of our normal lives eternal destiny is shaping our days and our ways. The awakening of the human spirit is a homecoming. Yet ironically our sense of familiarity often militates against our homecoming. When we are familiar with something, we lose the energy, edge, and excitement of it. Hegel said, “Das Bekannte uberhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht erkannt”– that is, “Generally, the familiar, precisely because it is familiar, is not known.” This is a powerful sentence. Behind the facade of the familiar, strange things await us. This is true of our homes, the place where we live, and, indeed, of those with whom we live. Friendships and relationships suffer immense numbing through the mechanism of familiarization. We reduce the wildness and mystery of person and landscape to the external, familiar image. Yet the familiar is merely a facade. Familiarity enables us to tame, control, and ultimately forget the mystery. We make our peace with the surface as image and we stay away from the Otherness and fecund turbulence of the unknown that it masks. Familiarity is one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of human alienation.”
In connecting with the plants I’ve known all my life, I’m attempting to draw attention to the habituated patterns of familiarity within myself. I’m experimenting with the patterns of mind & creating moments where I probe past the facade of familiarity, attempting to see the known in an unknown way. In working with Bramble & combining the edges of the known & the unknown, blending it with plants I haven’t tried before, experimenting with different recipes & processes, I’m practicing the art of seeing, practicing the craft of refusing alienation.
This is a practical post to share some of those experiments with you & to offer an invitation for you to connect with your local Bramble.
Blackberry & Rosemary Oxymel
Oxymel- An oxymel is a syrup-like mixture of honey and vinegar, often made with complementary herbs. Its name comes from the Greek words "oxys" (acid) and "meli" (honey), aptly reflecting its sweet and sour taste.
Usually, I make Blackberry vinegar & Elderberry & Blackberry Tinctures. However, this year I wanted to try something different for reasons outlined above. I wanted to make something bespoke to my needs. Over the next few months my intention is to finish the second half of my very first book. Something which I am both dreading & so excited for. I wanted to make something that could support me on this quest, both emotionally & physically. I wanted to make something that helped my concentration but also immunity.
Fortunately, our hedgerows are packed with such beings at this time of year. All in preparation for the colder months ahead. Our humble blackberries are a power house of herbal medicine. Packed with vitamin C, K & manganese, high in fibre and reportedly good for brain health. Blackberry has been traditionally used to treat pain, swelling, gout & diarrhoea. I’ve combined the blackberry with rosemary in this oxymel, fresh from my herb garden. I love Rosemary & often drink it in a morning as a replacement for coffee. I love the fresh warming feeling it gives me. Not only that, Rosemary is known as a great tonic for brain health, immunity & digestion. It’s anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-microbial, anti-tumerogenic, amongst other incredible things. So, I decided to combine both these plants in an Autumnal oxymel.
Recipe
2tbsp of raw unfiltered honey
250ml of raw apple cider (homemade if you have it)
Glass jar with a tight sealing lid
¾ cup of fresh herbs of your choice (optional)
handful of blackberries washed
Directions:
Combine honey with lukewarm vinegar. (Heating the vinegar will reduce its potential health benefits, but warming it slightly will help the ingredients blend together.) Add in herbs & berries. Stir to combine all ingredients.
Cover the container with a tight lid. Let the concoction sit on your counter for four to six weeks, shaking it every few days.
After four weeks, strain the resulting liquid and store in a clean jar with a tight lid in a cool dark cupboard. This should keep for up to a year.
Blackberry Ink
One of the ways I have deepened my relationship with place over the years is through wild pigment & mark-making. Colour is a language. Colour signifies the seasons. We can read a landscape through colour. Mark-making with foraged goods is a way to honour the seasons, a way of paying attention to the relationships in the ecologies we find ourselves.
Foraging for wild pigment & working with those materials is a gift. Working with the materials with our bare hands stimulates nerve endings, connects synapses, tugs on the senses. As an Educator who works primarily with adults in recovery, I prioritise creative, free-form play. Working with our hands in unstructured, unruly ways creates new neural pathways for us. As our hands traverse the landscapes of materiality, our body-mind recalibrates relationships, histories, stories associated with the material, with matter. Working directly with our bare hands & material cuts through the sterility of being at a screen, the coldness of the intangible. It cuts through to the parts of ourselves we had to neglect in order to assimilate into the machine.
So I urge you, go out, pick some blackberries & make marks with them. Give yourself some time. Rest. Leave your phone in the other room. You don’t need brushes or any special ingredients for this. You don’t need fancy paper, use an old letter, an envelope, use anything you have to hand. Just hold the intention that you are going to give yourself some time, some spaciousness, some play.
I like to work with fresh berries for the texture, however if you’d like to make ink the recipe is as follows.
Recipe
You’ll need
A muslin cloth/coffee filter
A good handful of berries
Mortar & Pestle
Pan
Cherry Tree Gum or Gum Arabic (Ratio 4:1)
The process of ink making
Put a small number of berries in the mortar to be squished and their pigment-rich juice to be collected for making ink.
Crush and grind each berry carefully, including the skin, where most of the pigment is present to release a maximum amount of pigment.
Transfer the mashed fruit and juice to a non-reactive pan for cooking.
Let the pulp and juice of berries simmer on low heat. The heat applied not only helps to preserve the berries but it thickens and darkens the liquid.
Once the pot has cooled down the liquid can be filtered using a muslin cloth, fine sieve, or simply a coffee filter. Filter twice if organic matter is still present. The ink obtained is incredibly smooth and has a beautiful colour to it.
The ink can also be thickened by the addition of gum arabic to it.
If you do get playful with Blackberry please send me your photo’s, I’d love to see them.
With joy,
Hannah-May