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19 comments
As usual all of your images are things of beauty and I really enjoy seeing them.
The deep drop shadows and cooler highlights in those shots are definitely intentional parts of the LUTs, so I'm glad they're noticeable! Thank you, as always, for the kind words.
You could order the dried herbs from Mountain Rose, or just get 'em at any good health food store/organic co-op/hippie grocery, but the medicine will be more potent if you grow them yourself. Fortunately, both lemon balm and wood betony are very rough-and-tumble, zero-care plants who thrive on benign neglect, look pretty, and have a beneficial character in the garden. If you're anywhere between Virginia and New York I can get you the plants directly from my nursery on my way up to teach at a mycology/ecology conference upstate next month. Otherwise, lemon balm shouldn't be too hard to find at a garden center or farmer's market. Wood betony might be a bit trickier. If there's a nursery specializing in edible, medicinal, or permaculture plants in your area that's where I'd look. If all else fails you can always order starts or seeds online (Strictly Medicinal is a good shipping nursery).
Probably way too much information, but for what it's worth here's a few more notes on harvesting and storing these plants for headache medicine: For good teas, harvest the leaves in the morning as soon as the dew has burned off. Above-ground parts of the plant are stronger when the moon is waxing or full, roots more potent when the moon is waning or new (not for any mystical reason, but because tidal gravity works on all water, including that within the xylem of plant cells which carry terpenoids and other medicinally-active compounds from roots to shoots). Clip stems or leaves at nodal junctures (where a leaf or a stem branches off from the main limb). If you want to be old-fashioned or just good-natured, a gift of a pinch of tobacco to the plant never hurts. Hang up your collected stems somewhere shady with good ventilation- strings strung between rafters work well. Once the leaves are dry, but still fragrant (about a week, more or less) take them down from the strings over a paper bag to collect shake. Strip the leaves from the stems and pack into glass jars, then store somewhere dark. I know some herbalists who throw out old stock and refresh every year, but in my experience most herbs will stay potent dried for at least two. Depending on your physiology, simples of one herb at a time taken in sequence might be more effective than a mix of two or more. Some people find a tincture of wood betony to be more effective than a tea, while lemon balm is almost always used in tea form. Combining these two forms of delivery might could be the ticket. Hope this helps!
Great work on these, I know how hard it is to get good compositions when stitching.