Steeping on the Windowsill

I went looking for St. Johnswort the other day. I was driving to the dump with one eye scouting for it. It's blooming everywhere along the roadsides.
The girls were getting sick of driving around; they really don't like going to the dump.
I tried to get them excited about hunting for magical plants. As I talked I realized that what I was telling them was true; I had just never articulated it before
I told them if you go looking for a plant; the plant will start looking for you. In a quiet mysterious way if you open up and relax, you will suddenly find yourself face to face with the plant you were wandering around thinking about.
I wanted a big patch of the straggly plant so I could take enough without decimating a whole gathering of plants. Also it had to be far from a busy roadside to decrease nasty car stuff and I needed it faraway from one of the many farm fields doused in pesticides.
After driving around a while, it was time to go home. On the way home I swung by the nearby private school. I had a feeling, but there was nothing. Disappointed, especially after my attempt-at-inspiration lecture, I turned the car around, and there, coming up the road from the other direction, I could see the perfect patch that had been hiding behind a hill, just waiting for me in the sun.
I cut a big bouquet to steep in olive oil and make a massage oil that does wonders for nerve pain; which I am having alot of with a sciatica attack that has been hounding me for a few months.


The the plants are in the oil on the windowsill. Soon they will turn a deep red. Rosemary Gladstar, the herbalist, writes about traveling around Switzerland where everyone had a jar of the red oil steeping in their windows.
Usually you hide the oils in the dark while they steep to prevent breakdown and molding, but this herb is so potent it somehow, magically she says, doesn't mold. The sunshine makes the potion even stronger.

When I came home I picked a card from Kris Waldherr's deck and this is what I got.

This Goddess Inspiration Oracle card was randomly chosen for you to reflect your day. It presents 80 goddesses from around the globe with inspiring messages and empowering stories of the Divine Feminine

All contents © Kris Waldherr 2008. All rights reserved.

Kris Waldherr, the artist who makes these cards said I could put them on my blog as long as I included this link to her facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/l/;KrisWaldherr.com.

Sitting on the toilet later (my only reading time!) I was reading last month's Oprah and was struck by an interview with Toni Morrison.

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200907-omag-toni-morrison-writing/3

She says about the creative process, "It's that being open—not scratching for it, not digging for it, not constructing something but being open to the situation and trusting that what you don't know will be available to you. It is bigger than your overt consciousness or your intelligence or even your gifts; it is out there somewhere and you have to let it in."

Sounds like looking for herbs, but not looking.....