23/10/2017
This weekend I have come to London to join my Herbal family to bid goodbye to our teacher, mentor and friend, Christopher Hedley.
We shared a tender day, opening our bruised and aching hearts in love and gratitude with words, poems, pictures, songs and silence.
I retraced my steps and visited some of the places of my herbal training. London is a place of huge power, full of people but it is also full of nature.
Christopher loved to take us out of our labs and lecture halls and through the city streets to find the power plants growing in the most unexpected of places, greeting the trees on the street, the plants and fungi growing through the cracks in the pavement. Finding the Belladonna in Regent's Park and meeting the fairies on primrose hill- mine wasn't your average university education! -But Christopher knew that to be a herbalist, as well as to study and fill your head with knowledge , you had to open your heart and connect to plants and nature and to your people.
To listen to stories and to learn to tell them.
Yesterday evening we sat, old friends and new ones, on Primrose hill, amongst berry laden hawthorn trees, looking out over central London and toasted our dear friend and gave our thanks. The sun shone, a Crow joined us in the tree and we shared stories.
Honey, roses, yarrow, sage, amanita.
💚💚💚
