Life updates: a new apartment and some herbalism — July 2016 in a nutshell
Hey folks,
This blog post is about getting in touch with readers, friends, and followers of my work, as well as also updating folks on some personal developments in my life.
July ended up passing me by extraordinarily quickly—tempus fugit at its finest. It's also been somewhat rejuvenating, despite hot humid days and nights...I usually find summer exhausting. But this year, July was a little less heavy than it has been in recent years.
As some of you perhaps remember my partner and I moved at the end of last month into a slightly cheaper apartment, but our new place has a tremendous amount of charm and it feels much more like home already. I even decided to share some pictures below here on my blog—I've never been able to have such a cute, homey living space since I started living on my own, and I'm a little proud how nice my living room looks. The rest of the house needs quite a bit more work before I'm ready to share pictures (or even invite folks over as guests) but my living room? My living room is super cute.
Much of July has been about settling in, repairs (the place is a bit of a fixer-upper), installing shelves, fixing up the kitchen—also, I've begun gardening once again.
Something I've always loved being able to do is maintain a small garden, and we finally have a balcony with enough sun exposure for it to really work. I have one flower (a dormant peace lily) and the rest are all botanicals which are edible or medicinal.
In a clockwise direction, starting in the bottom left corner of the above picture, are the following plants: chamomile, sage, wormwood, Moroccan mint, peace lily, two kinds of cat grass, rue, and of course, sweet basil.
I've always had an interest in medicinal herbs—and this past July I started experimenting with some beeswax and some herbal oils. After some trial-and-error I finally found a recipe for a herbal salve that really, really works.
The two biggest ingredients (after the beeswax and the grapeseed oil) are willow and nettle. Combined, the salve is an incredibly healing, anti-inflammatory balm that also moisturizes. I've been using the balm on my hands, my feet, and even on bug bites on my arm and legs. I've even been applying the salve to my wrists to help calm down the inflammation from tendonitis.
I don't know why I'm so surprised by how well the salves work. I've been sharing them with my family and a few friends (and to those of you I've promised salves to and haven't been able them to get to you, trust me, they're coming!) and I've started gathering up the courage to sell them online—until I get the online store up and running and figure out a product line, prices, and stock quantities, here's a fun instagram account @dandelionandnettle!
A few other blog posts are in the works. July really went by so quickly, I sort of lost track of all the wonderful writing ideas I had simmering in the back of my mind. August is now officially here, and I'm looking forwards to it—and looking forward to perhaps having some energy to get back into some proper discipline with the writing, working, and various projects I always love to juggle around.
Thank you very much for reading!