Greenwood Apprentice Circle: Working with plantain's gifts

Had a fun and magical day of learning with the beautiful Greenwood Apprentice Circle men today! And we finally remembered to take a picture!

We worked with our interrelationship with the archetypal elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, as well as Below (within), Above (outward) and the Sacred Center. We gathered and studied plantain leaf as our primary herb of the day, drinking a delicious infusion made from both narrow and broad leaf plantain that I'd gathered and dried from my wild gardens last year. We focused on plantain's many gifts such as plantain's ability to soothe and repair tissue both inside and outside the body, to clean skin wounds, to nourish, strengthen, and act as an antiseptic for the urinary system when used as a dried leaf infusion. We practiced a few different ways of applying it as a poultice, compress or fomentation to relieve pain, draw out foreign objects and/or localize poisonous venom or an infection. Plantain leaves can also simply be chewed up and applied directly to the body as in this picture where it's helping to reduce the itch and inflammation of some intense tropical mosquito bites.