Hedvig, The Blog

These are one of the strangest cosmetics I have made.  Now they aren’t connected to seeing plants in a new way, but still worth sharing.

Girls, forget your expensive exfoliating scrubs and moisturisers.  I have found the answer, again from Neal’s Yard.  But it’s through through sheer daring that I made and used these.  I know they look like falafels, but, they work (my new favourite saying, btw).

The recipe

1 slice of old brown bread (I know!)

1 handful raisins

1 handful almonds

Blend them, using a hand blender is definitely the easiest.  Then roll into small balls.

I washed my face with half a ball this morning.  You don’t have to worry about gross tasting stuff getting in your mouth, this is really good.  The bread is really exfoliating and then the almonds really moisturise it.   Incredible really.

My parents live in a very rural part of Northumberland (type Falstone in Google maps to check).  They bought the place a few years ago, and are slowly renovating the house, coach house and gardens.  As they have left the midgie-infested north for balmy southern Sweden I was left with the task of going up there to pick berries.  It’s a tough life.  I lived alone in the house for a year or so and spent a lot of time out in the veg garden, re-designing, pruning and generally caring for the place.  It is such a delight going back and seeing how things are going.

Falstone really is the perfect antidote to London. The vista are huge and all-embracing, the wildlife is abundant.  When I first arrived home I noticed something in the drive, it was the hedgehog scurry to safey.  There are deer that wander around the garden and fields, plenty of birds, the friendly cat from next door.  And the garden is beautiful and wild.

Picking berries sounds like it should be a relatively straight forward task.  You go to the berries, pick up, weigh them, pack them and freeze.  Easy.  Except in Falstone the first ‘go to the berries’ involves a real hunt for the red berries.  There are wild strawberries all over the garden: all around the pond, under the rose bushes, in the path, in walls, in holding beds.  The red currant I almost missed altogether as they were in pots close to the wall of the veg garden.  The raspberries are also all round the pond, there are massive cans where the lupins used to be rampant, and then all along the edge of the orchard.  The blackcurrants were much more obvious and I picked a lot.  The first few days things hadn’t quite ripened so I decided to change the thing I was picking… I went for leaves and herbs instead.

The garden was so abundant, it was just a delight to have the task of harvesting, and I hardly made a dent in it.  I picked a lot of peppermint, and had quite a few nasal enhancing peppermint teas there.  The oils in the peppermint are so strong you really do inhale the stuff, and it feels like your whole nose is opening up in relief.

A few days later, I reluctantly left our paradise to head back to Hackney. But my work was done: the pantry looked well stocked with hearty bundles of lemon balm, feverfew, lavender and peppermint; I have a good amount of lady’s mantle, elderflower, yarrow that are drying ready for winter infusions; and packed peppermint and wild strawberry cuttings for my brother’s garden.    But I still managed to get a good amount of berries.

Yesterday, I made the spur of the moment decision to invite a friend over to make some herbal products.  Wasn’t sure what we would or could make, but thought might as well give it a go.  Both of us are low income/unemployed, and so budget was important.

We spent the morning leafing through various books, exchanging recipe ideas and figuring out different herbs and ingredients.  I spent most of my time trying to get my head around shampoos and hair conditioners.  Michele, was researching toners and skin care products.

After a bit, we decided that we wanted to get on with something that we could do at home, and then we would go off and source other stuff.  So an easy one to get started with was lip balm.  We went for ‘Grapefruit conditioning lip blam’ from the Neal’s Yard Recipes for Natural Beauty.  It’s really straight forward.

1g cocoa butter

9g shea butter

10 drops grapefruit essential oil

We made a bain marie, with the butters in a citrus squeezer in a frying pan filled with boiling water.   Then poured the liquified butters in our sterlised containers.  Then when it was starting to solidify we added the essential oil.  It is really conditioning, but doesn’t make your lips tacky some lipsyl or stuff like that.

The body scrub was equally straight forward.

4 tbs salt

8 tbs oil (sweet almond would be good, we only had olive oil)

10 drops essential oils.

No heating with this one, but mix.  It is super effective, and cheap as chips.  Well worth it.

The other thing we tried was a real experiment, and I’ll let you know how that went when I’ve tried it.

It’s a few weeks later, but still going with the implementation, and going round the design cycle again and doing more assessment.

In an attempt to increase my income I have been following up doing getting more involved with permaculture in different ways.  So I have been apprenticing the introductory course, both the one run in London and Brighton.  Here’s my observation of Graham at work.

It was really interesting to see the different course.  I have been able to feedback to both Naturewise and Brighton Permaculture Trust (BPT) about the intros.

Next weekend I am going to do some teaching on an introductory course happening on Tottenham Marshes, and yesterday I went to a meeting with the lead teacher and other teachers, plus the people carer.  Interesting way to figure out the structure, exercise, timings and just get input from lots of different people.  So looking forward to that.  Also let the BPT know that I would be interested in doing more training with them.

Otherwise, I applied for a part time job with the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership and even better news is that I got invited for an interview.  So just scheming about that one, and fingers crossed for the interview next week.

I’ve also implemented other changes to decrease my expenditure.  I’m moving down to Brighton and renting there.  The rent is cheaper, which is a good thing.  I’m pushing ahead with trying to get working tax credits, which is a long and tedious process with lots of hoops.  Also just trying to be a bit more savy with spending money on travel etc.