Herbal Recipes for Fragrant Potpourri and Toilet Water

Here are some potpourri making tips from my own experience and recipes from a charming book, Potpourri, Incense and other Fragrant Concoctions by Ann Tucker Fettner.  Amazon has some used copies. The toilet water recipes follow below.

For making fragrant potpourri:
Begin in the spring by drying rose petals, an essential ingredient. Other flowers such as bachelor buttons, asters, straw flowers and statice add color. Any blossoms that dry well can be used. Mints, lavender, and lemongrass are excellent herbs for fragrance. Save the peelings from citrus fruit. Additional scent comes from manufacturers who sell potpourri supplies.

Order ground orris root, lavender, and essential oils. Sachet bags can be made from circular scraps of breathable fabric all tied up with ribbons. Decorative jars also make attractive holders. Baskets filled with fragrant sachets are an appealing presentation if fund-raising is your goal.

After you’ve collected and dried an ample quantity of blossoms and herbal leaves, mix in your other ingredients. Use a large bowl, not plastic, but ceramic or pottery. To hold the scent, you will need a fixative, often calamus or orris root. Generally, you use a tablespoon of a fixative for every quart of dried material. Add any spices you’ve chosen, cinnamon bark broken fine, rubbed mace, ground cardamom seeds, by sprinkling them over the petals and fixatives. If you like, add the crushed citrus peel, maybe some crumbled vanilla bean, and mix well with your hands.

The ingredients must be absolutely dry or the blend will molder. To all of this, add your favorite essential oils, rose, lavender, geranium, or tincture of musk or amber. Experiment with different blends. Don’t combine all the oils in the same batch. The possibilities are endless.

When you’re satisfied that the mixture is well blended, let it age in a crock for several weeks. Don’t have a crock? Brown paper grocery bags will do. Store the mixture out of sunlight in an airy corner or attic. Stir occasionally, then package prettily and enjoy.

For making Herbal toilet water:

Basic Toilet Water: To three pints of pure alcohol add one and one-quarter ounces of lavender oil, three-quarters ounce of oil of bergamot, three-quarters ounce of tincture of ambergris. Mix together and bottle. 

Rose Water: Boil two quarts of distilled water and remove from the stove. Add one-eighth ounce of rose oil, four drops of clove oil, and one pint of alcohol. Let this stand for several days before bottling.

Geranium Water: To two pints of pure alcohol add four ounces of rose water, five drops tincture of musk, one ounce tincture of orris root and one ounce of geranium oil. Allow to age.

How'd You Sleep? --Beth Trissel

“There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.”  ~Author Unknown

*Or barking dogs. However, cats are great nappers. Kitty Pavel snoozing in a sunbeam.

“Everything I know I learned from my cat: When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re tired, nap in a sunbeam. When you go to the vet’s, pee on your owner.” - Gary Smith

*But, of course! Most sensible creatures.

“Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.”

~James Thurber, Fables for Our Times, 1940

*Gotta love Thurber.

“Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience – unless they are still up.”  ~Ellen Goodman

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” ~E. Joseph Cossman

*Ah, the wisdom in this.

“Many things – such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly – are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”  ~C.S. Lewis

*I love CS Lewis!~

“Dawn:  When men of reason go to bed.” ~Ambrose Bierce

*That would not be me.

“There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.”  ~Edward Lucas

*I’m sure of this, even though I rarely drink any.

“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.”  ~Leo J. Burke

*And to that I add, or a new puppy. My daughter’s soft-coated Wheaton Terrier, Grady, in a calmer mode as a pup. Normally these dogs act like they’ve been shot out of guns much of the time for the first two years. But very loving!

“Consciousness:  that annoying time between naps.”  ~Author Unknown

*Clearly a big napper. Cheers!

“Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.”  ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002

“The days are cold, the nights are long,

The North wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
Save thee, my pretty love!”
~Dorothy Wordsworth, “The Cottager to Her Infant”

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.  ~Irish Proverb

Ah, the wisdom of the Irish.

“A day without a nap is like a cupcake without frosting.”  ~Terri Guillemets

*Granddaughter Emma Rose as a baby snoozing alongside our pom poo Sadie Sue.

“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness.” ~Charles Dickens

*I totally agree with this, get some of my best writing done then.

“What hath night to do with sleep?”  ~John Milton

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”  ~Anthony Burgess

*Or get prodded a lot if you’re my hubby.

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.  ~Author Unknown

Coffee, tea, chocolate, anyone?

“A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless…” ~William Wordsworth, “To Sleep”

***Because he’s not a cat. Pavel in pic again. Kitty Images by daughter Elise.

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he’d make a fortune.  ~Griff Niblack

“People who snore always fall asleep first.” ~Author Unknown

***Oh yes. Every time.

No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap.  ~Carrie Snow

*This is so true. The world would be a far better place if everyone took a nap.

“When I want to go to sleep, I must first get a whole menagerie of voices to shut up. You wouldn’t believe what a racket they make in my room.”~Karl Kraus, translated from German by Harry Zohn

*Actually, I would. They’re in my head too.  Noisy bunch. And weird. Say the craziest stuff.

“Sometimes I sit up late with my thoughts, reluctant to fall asleep and leave my thoughts alone by themselves.”  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

*Me too. Niece Cailin and Pavel napping together.

“How do people go to sleep?  I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack.  I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light.  I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”  ~Dorothy Parker

*I loved this one! Love her.

“O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.”
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg – Her Dream

“The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.”  ~Edgar Watson Howe

*Oh man, he’s got that right.

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”  ~Leonard Cohen

“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying.  It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”  ~Dale Carnegie

*True, true. He would know.

“Don’t fight with the pillow, but lay down your head
And kick every worriment out of the bed.”
~Edmund Vance Cooke

*Excellent advice. For that, some of us need medication.

Sweet dreams all!

Old Time Cures from the Shenandoah Valley

These cures are recorded in Shenandoah Voices by late Shenandoah Valley historian and author John Heatwole.  I knew John and much admired him.  He’s left a wealth of information behind in his books. For a sprained ankle take catnip, sprinkle salt on it and bind it to the ankle. 

‘Mullin tea’ was also used for sprained ankles.  The leaves of the mullin plant were boiled in vinegar and water and the ankle was bathed in it while it was still warm.

Turpentine was also rubbed on a sprain.  You never covered it or it would burn.~Catnip tea was made for children with the colic.~

Queen Anne’s Lace made into a tea is said to relieve backache.~Sage and honey tea is a good brew to give to someone with pneumonia. ~Drinking tea made from aromatic sage is said to keep a woman’s hair from turning gray prematurely.~

Lobelia tea was used by Thomsonian herb doctor Gabe Heatwole as a purge.  Lobelia is an annual or perennial plant of the bellflower family. Goldenseal and Comfort Root (*Pinelands Hibiscus or Cut-leaf Hibiscus) teas are good for an upset stomach. 

If you have kidney problems, swamp root tea can be used for relief.~

Greasy mustard plaster was used on the sufferer’s chest for a deep cold.To avoid being burned by the mustard, this plaster was made with lard and spread on a cloth that could be laid on the sufferer’s chest without burning. ~

Another non-burning plaster was made with mustard, lard, and egg whites.~

A family in Singers Glen used a mustard and lard poultice for pneumonia.  When the patient’s chest started to turn red, it was removed. The patient was washed off thoroughly, and then a hot onion poultice was applied. ~

For a bad cold or pleurisy, they’d put lard on your chest with salt sprinkled on it of a night.~

A tea made of peppermint leaves will stop a stomachache.~Pennyroyal tea was used to break a fever, for upset stomach and to treat the common cold.  It is of the same family as mint and yields aromatic oil.

During the Civil War, some Valley soldiers chewed slippery elm bark when in battle or on the march. It was said to relieve thirst and hunger.~

Miss Gray Pifer of Mt. Crawford said that ‘horehound grew down near the creek. Momma made a horehound syrup with brown sugar for coughs.’

~In Page County a woman said that her grandfather smoked a corncob pipe, and if a child in the family had an earache, he’d blow smoke in the ear as a cure.  She also said for spider bite, you should cut a piece from a new potato and hold it against the bite. Eventually the potato will turn black as it absorbs the poison. ~

*Images of the Shenandoah Valley and mountains by my mother Pat Churchman and my husband Dennis

Finding Gold In Herbal Lore

Calendulas wink cheerily in the flower bed that stretches along the road like a colorful island in the middle of a grassy sea. These calendula are special with their dark eyes dotting the centers of orange, saffron, yellow, and apricot flowers. A wealth of lore is invested in these simple plants, also known as “pot marigold,” and the blooms Shakespeare had in mind when he spoke of marigoldsThe Old English called them golds and ruddes.

From Discovery Health:

“Calendula has a long history of use as a wound-healing and skin-soothing botanical. This lovely marigoldlike flower (although called pot marigold, it is not a true marigold) is considered a vulnerary agent, a substance that promotes healing. Calendula also has anti-inflammatory and weak antimicrobial activity. It is most often used topically for lacerations, abrasions, and skin infections; less commonly, it is used internally to heal inflamed & infected mucous membranes.”

*Interesting and informative site that sells Calendula Cream.

From The Tree of Knowledge: Add calendula to baths to win respect and admiration. Scatter under your bed for protection & prophetic dreams. Carry for justice in court.~

An ancient herbalist states: “Golde is bitter in savour. Fayr and yellow in his flowur. Ye golde flowur is good to sene. It makyth ye syth bryth and clene.”

“It is said, only to look on marigolds will draw evil humours out of the head and strengthen the eyesight. The petals may also be ingested in a conserve of sugar to be taken during times of plague and pestilence, or dried and added to broths. And if you’ve been robbed, marigold will give you a vision of the thief. But it must be taken “only when the moon is in the sign of the Virgin and not when Jupiter is in the ascendant, for then the herb loses its virtue. And the gatherer, who must be out of deadly sin, must say three Pater Nosters and three Aves.”