5/18/11 Healing plants that appear seemingly from out of nowhere at your time of greatest need.

The first time this happened, I had an icky flu while visiting Ireland as an overseas student. I was staying at a youth hostel in Killarney, had cut my caffeine consumption by about 90% from my several daily "Express!" cups at brasseries in France, was dealing with the dilute Irish coffee, as well as tea. So my head was swimming with the caffeine withdrawal symptoms, and here was this guy in the youth hostel's kitchen, coughing and sneezing all over everything. Within a day I had caught it, and as I was pedaling a rented bike in the wooded park there, felt miserable and achy and stuffy. So I cried out, in the middle of that Irish national park, that was covered in holly and ivy over that winter holiday. I cried out to the unfamiliar Irish grasses, to the unfamiliar hills in the distance, to the unfamiliar grey Irish clouds on that day, I cried out in the middle of the field, because I knew somehow that plants everywhere speak the same language, that everywhere plants respond to our request, if made in love and harmony. I cried out in the field, and looked around and was about to give up and go back to the hostel and suffer again. Then I noticed a familiar plant, a raspberry shrub in the middle of the field, with a few dried leaves and berries still clinging to the withered stalks. I recognized the plant, and I knew that I had seen raspberry listed as an ingredient in herbal teas I had had, so I knew it was safe. I picked a few twigs off that dried shrub, and took them with me back to the hostel, and brewed up some tea with them.
And here's the thing: Raspberry is not commonly an herb used for colds and flu, but that raspberry, that tea, helped me feel better.