Lavender and Healing
The lavender that we harvested for bouquets is dry now. We dried the bunches in the dark, hanging them upside down and ventilating the room with fresh air. We cleaned the stems of bind weed and the small leaves at the bottom of the stems. The bouquets were then packed in boxes of 30 to store in cool darkness until we make them into product. The dried lavender comes from the recently planted Lot Sophia, these stems from plants that are two and three years old. Intensely purple, the bouquets are vibrant. Their scent fills our storage area in our home.
Fragrance is volatility, an important message to the pollinators that the time is ripe for gathering pollen and nectar. According to Rudolf Steiner, fragrance is an expression of the Being behind we call plant, an expression of its essence. Plants that contain the volatility of essential oils are medicinal. Symptoms are clues to imbalance. Healing happens when we are put back in touch with wholeness. Plants offer this rebalancing to us through communication with essence, and in part through fragrance.
The essence of lavender is a strength that comes from growing even in thin and rocky soils under conditions most plants could not thrive in— and still exuding a sweet fragrance. In the Pyrenees I found lavender growing in long abandoned gardens and along ancient trails. The constituents in lavender essential oil balance the nervous system, acting as a tonic if a tonic is needed and as a relaxant if the body is stressed.
Lavender’s scent—and the bees—even helped us in our marketing, creating quite a buzz! (see last blog entry, from Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation, page 83.)
As we work with lavender, we are blessed with her medicine. A bouquet brings this right into our home. (and you may want one of your own! We have both small and large bouquets. Links below pictures.)
Large Biodynamic Lavender Bouquet Small Biodynamic Lavender Bouquet
