Astral Boutique's blog

Snow Day

Our first snow of the winter...

The surface of the snow at twilight, like a frozen ocean:

San Ramon

This week I was visiting my parents in San Ramon. San Ramon is a sleepy suburb located in a broad valley about 45 minutes East of San Francisco. It is an area famous for fantastic moonrises and for the ashram where the famous Indian "hugging" guru, Ammachi, makes her twice-yearly West Coast visits. 

View from my parent's house:

Mt. Diablo overlooks the valley:

The best thing about San Ramon, in my opinion, is the beautiful oak-studded hills. I took a walk on a beautiful misty day in the Blackhawk Open Space Preserve, admiring the natural beauty:

 

 

 

If you are in the Tri Valley/Contra Costa County area, I really recommend a visit to the hills.... it is an inspiring escape from the cacophony on the valley floor. 

 

Rain Makes Moss Grow

We have been waiting for a long time for the rains to come to Northern California this winter. The past few days a big storm finally blew in, with bits of snow and hail at the frigid start, and tons and tons and tons of water in the middle. The wind was so lusty and gusty in the middle of the night that it was hard to sleep in the loft upstairs, with the tree branches bending and creaking all around us and making it feel like we were in a captain-less ship on the high seas.

I just love all of that water washing the air clean, stirring things up, moistening the ground, filling the ponds in the meadow behind our house, and making the frogs sing. It also made the moss suddenly turn bright green and lush on every tree, like this huge oak tree that grows right next to our house:

I hope all you residents of the Northern Hemisphere are staying cozy out there in Winter Land....

Red on Grey

The last apples in the orchard...

Snow White

In late summer, there is always a lot more wildlife out and about in the Sierra Foothills. Over the past few weeks, it has been like an Encyclopedia entry on "animals of the woodland"- I have seen a family of raccoons, opossums, and foxes, along with the usual residents. Someone even saw a bear while we were down at the river! 

Deer are always around, but I have seen more this year than ever before. When I was taking some photos for the shop, I heard a rustling in the nearby trees, and this deer popped his head up and spotted me. Normally, deer run away at the first sight of a person, but this young buck actually walked towards me! I was talking to him and he seemed as tame as a pet.... he just started eating some fallen apples right behind me. I even managed to set up a shot for my Etsy listing and capture him in it! 

I felt totally like Snow White.

Of course, we can't forget the most important animals in my life: the cats! Zazou leaped on this rock as the self-timer was going off, so he got into a listing, too.

Mrrrow!

Poppy Day

It is hard to pick a favorite flower, but I have a very special place in my heart for California Poppies. They are the State Flower, and they always had an aura of excitement around them since we were taught in grade school that if we picked them, we would get arrested! (That was the rumor, anyway.) It is illegal to pick wild poppies, but of course you are free to do what you want with the ones in your own garden.

I love how poppies are so delicate, with their velvety, paper-thin petals that close in cold, windy, or wet weather, and their soft green-grey leaves; yet they are tough citizens of the sometimes harsh Mediterranean climate of California, preferring disturbed, dry soils where other plants could never survive. These babies are in our garden, but they are not being over-coddled, and they do best growing over the edge of the bed where the afternoon sun bakes down on them relentlessly. 

California Poppies also make great medicine: they are a nervine, aka, a calming, slightly sedating herb, good for kids that have wound themselves into a tizzy by running around beyond their usual bedtime, or adults who are overstimulated and having a hard time taking the edge off. All ariel parts are used (flowers and leaves)... I don't recommend using the ripened seed pods, as I find them too strong.

I am putting up some poppy tincture here. The "folk" on the label refers to my method, meaning that I didn't take precise measurements, but rather eyeballed the percentage of alcohol. "Etoh" is alcohol, and I added some astrological info just to sort of keep track of everything (there are much more intentional methods of putting up herbs in ways that align the spirit of the plants with the movements of the stars, but I was working primarily with the time that the poppies were at their most potent and ready to be harvested!) I used high quality organic grape alcohol mixed with water (you have to special order it), but you can use vodka just as well- it's about 40% alcohol, which is what you need to break down the medicinal components. Fill a jar with plant material first and then add your alcohol; top off the next day as it tends to soak in, and you don't want any part of the plant sticking above the level of the liquid. I use a stone to help hold the plant down inside the jar as it macerates. 

In 2-4 weeks I will press out the liquid from the plant matter (with as much force as possible- you really want to wring the plant dry) and bottle up my medicine. 

For those of you who are just getting to know me, I should mention that several years ago I used to write an herbal blog called Kitchen Witch. I put stuff in there from my non-herbal life, too, but if you look through the posts you will find a lot of good herbal info and photos. In an ideal world I would still be writing that blog, but there are only so many hours in the day! I will try to post herbal stuff in this blog more often, since I know a lot of you are interested in it. Enjoy!

Full Bloom

Because of all the snow we had this winter, and our looooooong Spring, the foothills are more beautiful than ever this summer. Every wild flower is twice its normal size, and more numerous by far. The half-wild flowers in my home garden have also taken off like crazy!

Some orange lilies that were gifted to me, with Russian Sage, Vervain, and Yellow Water Lilies in the background:

I have never seen so many bees, either. Bees make me so happy! They are really hard to capture on film, however- I tried a dozen times to get this shot of the bee on the lavender...

Some wild things are called weeds, but I encourage them to grow, like these little white daisy-like flowers (whose name I don't know):

And the stars of the show, of course, are the wild sweet peas, which are literally up to my hips on the hill behind my house:

And the Queen Anne's Lace, which is always pretty, but this year towers over everything else in huge stands. I could look at her forever! Here she is with my St. Francis statue, with Comfrey growing in the background:

Happy mid-summer, everyone!

New Friends

Up on the hill... 

The first sweet pea of summer. Soon the entire hillside will be covered, knee-deep, with these beauties!

Daisy days...

A grasshopper hanging out on my shoe!

Turn Your Face Towards The Sun

Early morning on the hill, and all the flowers are facing the rising sun:

 

Shapes Of Late Spring

Up on the hill, new things are appearing every day...