53 Yarrow for Wounds & Boundaries| When the Sun Goes Dark
Release Date: 08/17/2026
58 Putting the Garden to Bed| Fall Cleanup the Herbalist’s Way
The New England Herbary
As October’s first frosts arrive, the garden is ready to rest. In this episode, Brenda shares the old way of putting the garden to bed: not stripping it bare, but tucking it in. Drawing on wisdom from her friend and longtime gardening teacher Bettylou Sandy, she walks through what to cut back, what to leave standing for the birds and native bees, and how a blanket of fallen leaves feeds the soil all winter. She shares how to plant garlic at the New Moon in Libra, and introduces witch hazel, New England’s native tree that blooms just as everything else lets go. Whether your garden is acres,...
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57 Mabon: The Balance Of Light And Dark, And The Rising Of The Harvest Moon
The New England Herbary
Autumn equinox 2026 arrives September 22 at 8:05 PM Eastern — the exact moment light and dark stand in balance before the Harvest Moon rises full on September 26. This week's episode is a Mabon meditation on the second harvest, the threshold between light and dark, and hawthorn — the old hedgerow guardian of doorways — plus a folk-method walkthrough for a simple hawthorn haw cordial to carry you into the dark half of the year. In this episode: — The exact astronomy of the 2026 autumn equinox and why "equal night" isn't quite exact — Mabon's roots in Welsh myth, the English harvest...
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56 Elderberry Syrup for Cold Season: The Herbal Craft of Putting By
The New England Herbary
Learn how to make elderberry syrup at home with this simple, traditional folk-method recipe — plus what makes elderberry one of autumn's most trusted allies for cold and flu season. This week, we're deep into putting-by season — the quiet, practical work of turning a harvest into medicine that lasts through winter. I walk through the full elderberry syrup process step by step (no fancy equipment, no precise measurements, just the old way of doing it), along with the plant's constituents, energetics, and history — including its old European folklore as a guarded, protective tree, and its...
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55 The Sturgeon Moon and the Second Eclipse: Light at the Full
The New England Herbary
Sturgeon Moon eclipse ritual: a full moon in Virgo, a partial lunar eclipse, and the old grain-harvest folklore that echoes it. This week we hold the second doorway of eclipse season with gratitude, not urgency. "The sky doesn't belong to any one tradition. It just gets read, faithfully, by whoever's standing underneath it." The moon has been swelling since the new dark of the total solar eclipse — and on August 28th, it arrives full, under the shadow of a partial lunar eclipse in Virgo. We trace the Sturgeon Moon back to its true source with the Algonquin peoples of the Great Lakes and Lake...
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54 Virgo Season Herbalism| The Craft of Putting By
The New England Herbary
Virgo season has arrived, and it's time for the craft of putting by. This episode covers calendula's uses in tea, skincare, and a step-by-step calendula-infused almond oil recipe for your fall and winter apothecary. As the sun crosses from Leo into Virgo, the wheel turns from gathering toward keeping. We explore the old mythology behind Virgo — the maiden with the sheaf, her roots in the stories of Demeter and Persephone, and why she and Scorpio are so often called the zodiac's most misunderstood signs — alongside this week's moon phase and what it asks of us as the season shifts. Then we...
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53 Yarrow for Wounds & Boundaries| When the Sun Goes Dark
The New England Herbary
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): the herbalist's wound-herb, a plant of protection and boundaries, its folklore, medicine, and plant spirit — an eclipse-season episode. A grounded look at yarrow's uses for wounds and women's health, its old names and divination lore, and the psychic protection tradition that made it a plant of sacred edges. There is a corner of my Vermont land I did not want you to see — a flooded acre where the black ash are dying and the emerald ash borer has come at last. But standing in that broken ground, calm and unbowed, was yarrow: the herb that has staunched the...
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52 John Barleycorn & the First Loaf: The Story of Lughnasadh
The New England Herbary
Lughnasadh, the first harvest of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, has come — the season of the first grain, the first loaf, and the old harvest gratitude. In this episode, we follow the story of John Barleycorn, the centuries-old ballad of the grain that is cut down, buried, and rises again as the bread on our table and the ale in our cup — and we meet meadowsweet, the Queen of the Meadow, the fragrant herb that once crowned the harvest drink and still steadies us through the cold-and-flu season. Come stand with me at the edge of a Vermont field where the light has begun to lean toward...
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51 Motherwort | The Lion-Hearted Mother
The New England Herbary
Come and sit a while. I’ve just returned from eight days in Vermont and this week we meet motherwort — Leonurus cardiaca, the lion's heart — the fierce, unbeautiful, wholly self-possessed old plant that grows at the edges of fields and slips any garden that tries to hold her. She is the herb the old ones reached for when a heart was racing at three in the morning, and she steadies it without ever stealing your wits. We'll sit with what she does in the body, hear how the seventeenth-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper set her beneath the sign of Leo the lion, and look up together at...
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50 Our Grandmothers' Herbs | The Thread That Came Down Sideways
The New England Herbary
Some of us inherited the apron and the herb bundle. Some of us inherited three thousand miles and a grandmother who was at war with the dandelion. This week, in the deep hearth of Cancer season, we sit with the long thread — the women whose hands came before ours, and the strange and sideways ways the green world gets handed down. I'll tell you about my grandmother, who fled a northern Michigan farm and never looked back, who tended two rose bushes and a few tomatoes in a patch of ground the size of a doorway as though they were the only things that mattered — and who once made my...
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49 The Lavender Drawer
The New England Herbary
There is a drawer in every house that remembers. Open it, and something rises to meet you — soap and sunlight and something older than both. This week, in the heart of Cancer season, we visit the lavender, standing at her fragrant peak in the July garden. We follow her long thread through history: the Roman baths, the washerwomen who were themselves called "lavenders," the London street sellers crying their bundles up to the windows, and the linen drawers of our grandmothers. Along the way, a heatwave drives your host from a camper to a screened tent to a quiet room in a small Vermont...
info_outlineYarrow (Achillea millefolium): the herbalist's wound-herb, a plant of protection and boundaries, its folklore, medicine, and plant spirit — an eclipse-season episode. A grounded look at yarrow's uses for wounds and women's health, its old names and divination lore, and the psychic protection tradition that made it a plant of sacred edges.
There is a corner of my Vermont land I did not want you to see — a flooded acre where the black ash are dying and the emerald ash borer has come at last. But standing in that broken ground, calm and unbowed, was yarrow: the herb that has staunched the wounds of soldiers and mothers for a thousand years.
This week the sun goes dark and the moon runs into shadow. Eclipse season opens its doorway. And so we sit with the plant that has always known how to stand in a threshold — the wound-herb and the boundary-keeper.
Together we'll meet yarrow as she truly is: how to know her ferny, silver-green foliage in a summer meadow; why the old names — nosebleed, woundwort, soldier's woundwort, carpenter's weed — all remember her as the warrior's healer; her long companionship with women through every season of life; and her quieter reputation as a plant of psychic protection, sacred boundaries, and "boundaries in a bottle." We'll draw on National Geographic's herbal, Maude Grieve's A Modern Herbal, and Judith Berger's Herbal Rituals, and lean on the plant-spirit teachings of Vermont herbalist Pam Montgomery, who reads yarrow as the fierce protector learning, at last, to soften and to receive.
If this episode speaks to you, share it with a fellow gardener — and find the companion newsletter and the illustrated story on YouTube, where this week's work makes its three homes.
Reflection: If this eclipse is a doorway, what are you being invited to walk through — or to leave behind?
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🌿 Herbs & Favorite Tools
(affiliate links — thank you for supporting this work)
Herbs featured in this Show:
1. Dried Yarrow Flowers
2. Yarrow Tincture
3. Yarrow Flower Essence
4. Plant Spirit Healing: A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness - by Pam Montgomery
My favorite tea-making tools:
BAYKA French Press Coffee Maker
Cold Brew Coffee Filter for Wide Mouth Mason Jar,
Heat-proof wide-mouth mason jars
📚Bookstore - Brenda J. Sullivan Books
https://www.brendajsullivanbooks.com/
🌱 My Garden Journal – A How-To Garden Book for Kids
Because every gardener starts with a single seed — and a little curiosity.
My Garden Journal is part how-to guide, part creative keepsake, designed to help children (and their grown-ups) learn the basics of growing food and flowers while documenting their journey.
Inside you’ll find:
- Simple planting guidance
- Space for drawings, photos, and notes
- Imaginative themed gardens (Harry Potter Herb Garden, Young Chef’s Garden, Monarch Butterfly Garden)
Perfect for homeschooling families, budding herbalists, and anyone who wants to grow confidence by growing plants.
✨ You’ll be amazed at how much you — and your garden — grow when you take time to journal the journey.
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🎶 Music Credits
A heartfelt thank you to Alexander Nakarada for the music featured in this story.
I am a Patreon supporter of Alexander’s work.
🎼 Song: Planning - 320bit - September 5, 2021
🔗 https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/
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