Raven Crest Botanicals

#braiding #sweetgrass

#summersolstice #altar

Summer Solstice Offerings!

Today is the peak. The sun moves through her zenith. It is a brightly lit sacred pause. High noon on the clock of the year. The summer solstice is the point in time of greatest expression. Filled with outward, upward, hot, moving, expanding, bright yang energy. And right in the middle of its center, a tiny dot of yin. Cool, dark, inward, concealed, nourishing, beautiful yin energy. From here she will grow and expand. Allow us to balance the heat of the summer, help us to slow...ly pull our energy back inwards so we can enter late summer and fall nourished and prepared to enjoy the cooler seasons. But today, today we celebrate the peak. With friends, music, an altar full of roses and our hearts full of sunshine. Enjoy strawberries, chocolate, and a brightly burning bon fire. Let your heart dance to the fireworks of lightning bugs under a starry sky. Health is being in rhythm with nature. Embrace the rhythms of the year. Every day. Wishing you all a bright, love and light filled summer solstice! Susanna

Nothing like bathing in a basket of freshly harvested #roses

Hardly anything tickles my green heart as much as blooming #solomonsseal in the shade garden. This beautiful forest medicine offers its sweet tasting, spine like looking rhizome to heal inflamed joints and align displacements of the musculoskeletal system. It offers cooling healing mucilage to lubricate dry and achy joints and helps rebuild worn down cartilage. Look for this beauty when you walk the woods near a creek next time. She loves the sound of running water

"I am not a 'good' gardener. I like to let my garden be wild, allowing its unique personality to guide me in tending it. Allowing it to change and transform fro...m year to year, allowing it to say exactly what it wants to say. . If you find yourself tending a piece of land, no matter the size or length of time, it is no accident. I believe that the land has very much dreamt of your arrival, waiting to share its deepest longings with you, so that you might help enact them. The best secret is that the land’s desires will match your own dreams, in marvelously mysterious ways. Don’t we all share the dreams of beauty, and harmony, and unconditional love? . A garden is a sacred conversation between human and land. A garden is where we come together to co-create a living, breathing mirror of the soul. A garden is where the land tells us, again and again, how very loved we are. . I look at my garden and all I see is love." . Words and photo by one of my absolute gardening heroines, Kate Gardiner Clearlight. Give her a follow here and on Instagram @plantfolk for a mesmerizing herbal and floral journey. See more

My dear friend Andrew Stephen Pratt shared this sweet spontanious video with me about how he uses our Agua Flores plant cologne. Thank you Andrew!

These subtle colors of winter are so beautiful and make me long for spring all at ounce.

May we all flow with divine guidance and create beautiful waves and patterns along the way. HAPPY HEALTHY JOYFUL LIGHT FILLED 2021!!!

BLOSSOM & BLOOM TEA. All the flowers from our garden are dancing around our sweet tulsi harvest: rose , calendula, bee balm, calendula , blue cornflower, Mauritian mallow and pink mallows . Such a delicious memory of summer when the only color outside is the purest white of a fresh blanket of snow.

DANCING with the DARK The beginning of a great turning point is happening in the sky today. The rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the ringing in of the age of Aquarius, the winter solstice and a new moon, all in one moment in time. On the longest night of the year we honor the darkness, this wondrous thing of beauty. She is the vessel that holds the transformation into a new story, a new birth. And as we are entering the stillpoint of the sun, we are also creating the ...space to hold the dance, to welcome the return of the light. In this sacred pause lies the seed for renewal, the invitation to immerse ourselves into the creative healing dark. Like the trees, we are invited to shed all our leaves, down to bare branches and bones, and discover the essence of our being. By entering the portal to the underworld and engaging in the work of grief and sorrow we are led to our calling, our path, our purpose. Rest, sleep, dream, cry, make art, embrace the dark. Invite the mystery into conversation. Don’t chase it, but let it come to you like the fox in a snowy field. Dream plants like mugwort and rose help us to connect with our dream maker and open our hearts. Encourage the light to return by lighting a bonfire or a candle on your altar. Ceremony and ritual pay attention to what you like to wake up, what you like to feed. Remember the gifts of the dark on this day and dance to its mystical, beautiful song. Happy winter solstice, new moon, new age of Aquarius, Susanna See more