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Good evening, my friends. Monday nights can feel heavy in a quiet way. You did the best you could today and your head is still full of questions you did not get answered. What part do I use. Did I learn the check right. Am I the only one still unsure about a flower everybody else seems to know. If that is where you are sitting tonight, pull up a chair. You are not sitting there alone. Today we sat with calendula together and you brought your honest questions to the table. That is exactly how this room works. One flower, one clear plant check, one question at a time, and nobody has to pretend she has it all memorized by supper. My notebook still has more questions than answers some nights, and my mug still goes cold while I am writing them down, so you are in good company here. Tomorrow we walk on to chamomile, Plant 8 in The Hearthstone Herbal on page 22. We will meet that little flower slow and plain, lay out how to know her for sure, and talk through what tradition teaches about her place on an evening table, with the science lane sitting right beside it in respect. No rushing and no guessing. Just the next plant, learned together, one step at a time. Thursday we gather live right here in the university at 6 in the evening eastern. Bring your calendula question if it is still sitting with you, and bring your chamomile curiosity too. We will hold both with care. Tell me below one calendula thought that is still sitting with you tonight, or one thing you hope chamomile helps you understand better as we learn her. Plain words are perfect here. You are not learning this alone anymore, and nobody in this room gets left behind with a question sitting heavy in her chest. Love, Sherra

If you have ever looked at a bright pot of calendula and thought I should know this one by now, but I still do not trust myself with it, you are not alone in that, and you are not doing this wrong. So many women tell me the same story at their own kitchen tables. Confused by conflicting herb information. Tired of guessing. Scared of picking the wrong plant. Sad that the old knowledge was never handed down to them in a plain way. They want real knowledge and real support from a real person, not another page that makes them feel small for asking. Calendula is the flower that brings that worry right to the surface, because it looks like a flower you already know and still leaves you unsure. Is it the right marigold. Is the one in the garden bed the same as the one in the book. What if you pick the wrong one. This teaching comes from The Hearthstone Herbal, Plant 7 on page 20, with the deeper dive on page 21. Hold those two pages open while you think about your answer. Page 20 lays the plant check out plain. True calendula is a sticky, aromatic annual with soft oval leaves and bright yellow to orange daisy like flowers, and its seed heads curl into little claws. The bedding marigolds are Tagetes, a different plant with finely divided leaves and a sharp pungent smell, and they are not a substitute. That one check is the difference between learning a plant and guessing at one, and it is the check I want you to carry with you. Tradition uses the whole flower heads or the petals in oils and salves and teas and food, and tradition teaches this flower as warming to neutral and gently drying and tissue soothing. Science backs a piece of this plant too, and we let that lane say what it actually knows right beside tradition. When researchers measured calendula they found skin soothing and anti inflammatory plant activity in laboratory work and small studies, with results that depend on the preparation. No promises live on these pages, and no cure talk either. Just a flower laid out in order so you can meet it calm.

Welcome to the deeper dive. This one lives only here in the university, and today we talk about becoming the woman whose garden works for her all season long, one faithful flower at a time. Calendula is Plant 7 in The Hearthstone Herbal, page 20, with the deeper dive on page 21. In the group we learned the plant check and the tea and oil picture. Here we go one layer deeper and learn the harvest rhythm and the growing, step by plain step. Start with the harvest rhythm, and write it in your notebook on your calendula page. Pick fully open heads on dry days, ideally mid morning after the dew dries. Harvest every few days, because the more you pick, the more it blooms, the rare relationship where taking encourages giving. Pull the petals from the green base for the cleanest drying, and spread them thin so the sticky heads do not mold. Keep picking and it keeps performing. One page a week and by winter you have a little herbal of your own started, in your own hand. On growing it yourself, the book is plain. Calendula is a Mediterranean native and a garden plant here, not a wild one, so you will meet it in beds and borders and not in meadows. Sow seed directly in early spring, or in fall where winters are mild, barely covered, in full sun and average soil. It loves cool weather and blooms hardest in spring and fall, sulking a little through high summer heat. In warm regions it self sows and returns on its own. Harvest or deadhead often to keep the flowers coming until hard frost, and neglect the deadheading and it will still forgive you. The deeper history layer is worth sitting with slowly. During the American Civil War, battlefield doctors used calendula petals on wounds, laying the bright petals right onto the injuries, and that practice carried into World War I, when British garden designer Gertrude Jekyll campaigned to grow it for hospitals in France. The Germans had already named it pot marigold for the handfuls they tossed into soup pots for color and body. From the operating tent to the soup pot, this is a flower that has always shown up where people needed care and a good meal both.

One layer deeper than the group round, right here at our table. What is one small way you will listen to your body this week Today we turn your answer into a one small way card you can keep for the whole week. At the top write your one intention in your own words. Under it write the one small step that makes it real, with its day and its time named plain. Under that write one line about what your body asked for that made you pick this one. At the bottom leave a line for Friday, where you will write one honest line about how the week felt with that intention kept or mostly kept. Mostly kept counts here. This room is about listening, not perfect scores. This is the same habit The Hearthstone Herbal is built on, two full pages a plant with its story and its traditional uses laid out plain so you stop guessing and start knowing your own body and your own hands. If your intention has a plant in it, like a morning cup or an evening tea from tradition, find that plant in your copy and read its pages next to your card this week. No single book page is named for this one on purpose, because the plant in your intention is your pick, not mine. Your page number is the one your plant lives on in your copy. One question for the comments. What did your body ask for that made you pick this one