My love affair with Rosemary
My neighbors Rosemary Bush in Flower, Portland, Oregon
To preface this story I feel like it’s important to point out that growing up in Alaska doesn’t really give you exposure to a wide variety of plants. We have Birch, Spruce, Cottonwood and Poplar for trees and Yarrow, Chamomile, Rose Hips, Devils Club, Cranberries, Blueberries, and Skunk Cabbage. The non-native plants that grow there are also quite limited. All the veggies are of the cold weather variety and fruit is pretty rare. All that being said, I've been communicating with plants for as long as I can remember. (I like to say “communicating with” versus, “talking to” because otherwise it sounds like I’m simply talking at them and not feeling what they say.) One of my first and only memories as a child is of talking with a stem of yarrow. (I have a horrendous memory and succeeded in earsing most of my childhood…maybe I’ll talk about CPTSD at a later date.) To this day Yarrow is still one of my favorites and we hang out a lot all spring long.
As I grew older I met other magical herbs like Lavender. I didn’t really meet lavender personally until I came down to the lower 48 to live. I had met her in the form of lotion and perfume. She got me through the rough years of puberty. For me there is a difference between working with the byproducts of a plant and actually meeting the plant. I like to compare it to looking at paintings in a book versus seeing them first hand in a museum. Obviously it’s nice looking at them in a book but if you get to see them up close and personal it’s astounding. Clove is a good example. I love cloves! I love how it smells, I love to eat it and I love to burn it. Have I ever met a clove tree? Sadly, no and until I do, I’ll never know it as well as I know other plants. I’m going to just go ahead and admit that I didn’t know the Cloves came off of a tree until I sat down to write this. That was exactly the experience that I had with Lavender, except that I did know she wasn’t a tree because I had seen all those beautiful pictures of the fields in France. I knew some of her peaceful, beautiful essence and so of course when I finally met her, she was as lovely as I knew she would be.
So when am I going to get around to my love affair with Rosemary? Right now! I hadn’t known her very well before I moved to Portland. I didn’t grow up eating her because my mom wasn’t a big fan. When I got down to Portland I saw her everywhere, but I was distracted by life and by the variety of plants that I was meeting everywhere. Fast forward 9 years to 2020 when I actually met her for reals. In a future post I’ll explain the origin story of Necessary Magic but for the time being I’ll simply say that it was tied up with my first actual seeing and meeting Rosemary. I saw her everywhere and touched her all the time. I have to say that maybe I wasn’t as polite as I could have been. I sort of thought of her as common and ordinary. One night she came to me in a dream with some pretty strong Beyonce meets Queen of Swords energy and demanded respect. Of course I was like, “I’m so sorry, whatever you say my queen. I am yours.” Ever since we have been besties. She acts as my Obsidian of herbs, profoundly protecting me. She also heals me and helps to prevent nightmares. These are the main ways that I work with her. I know others work with her in terms of love magic and a whole host of other ways.
Like I mentioned in my previous post about Runes, our relationship to different entities is distinctly different from those of other people. My relationship with Rosemary is going to be different than yours, and that’s okay. I think at times people get really wrapped up in what one or another author says about a plant and then start questioning their own lived experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read a ton of books by different authors and Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs is one of my favorites. And, also, I don’t let that get in the way of communicating with plants and finding out what sort of relationship they would like to have with me, (if any at all). I find it best to not force a relationship with any entity if they don’t want it. Consent is important regardless of who you’re interacting with.
