As I wrote at the beginning May, I had a surprise return of last year’s Belladonna plant. I’ve had mixed luck with Deadly Nightshade. Some have lived two or three years, while about half never made it beyond the first. This was a rather puny plant last year so I was surprised to see it […]
Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger): It gave oracles their sight and made witches fly, yellow blossoms on one of the darkest of plants inhabiting a deadly corner of the Witch’s Garden
The henbane’s first effect was purely physical discomfort. My limbs lost certainty, pains hammered in my head, and I began to feel extremely giddy….I went to the mirror and was able to distinguish my face, but more dimly than normal. It looked flushed and must have been so. I had the feeling that my head […]
From The History Trekker: A bedtime story for a forgetful country …
It was another spring, the night of March 5, 1770, in Boston, which was already a hotbed of unrest against a government which many felt was oppressive. The media is fanning the flames, and when an agent of the government kills an eleven year old boy, tensions escalated. That night in Boston, a private citizen […]
A strange account of the monster rattlesnake Big Jim, who from his lair on Rattlesnake Bluff terrorized the Skillet Fork and Wabash river valleys … (or Snakes on a Plain)
Rattlesnake bluff, home of the legendary rattlesnake Big Jim is a heavily wooded bluff overlooking the Skillet Fork River, in White County, Illinois. I’d figured that much out by poring over Google Earth for some time, trying to match up the satellite images with the historical record. Or what little record I had, and I […]
Honeysuckle puts off a heady scent in the Witch’s Garden, June 1
The poetic scent of Honeysuckle has inspired the poets, as well as lovers for centuries. Shakespeare wrote “Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms … So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist.” For Chaucer, Honeysuckle was a poetic metaphor for faithfulness in love, steadfast. The Victorians didn’t allow Honeysuckle into […]
Valerian blooming in the Witch’s Garden, June 1
Valerian has had a place in the magical pharmacy since ancient Rome and Greece. The Roman physician and philosopher Aelius Galenus remarked on its use as an aid to insomnia, which was also known by the Greeks, as it was written up by Hippocrates a few centuries earlier. Our old friend, Nicholas Culpeper described Valerian in […]
