This is a musing about Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)…… please note nothing I say here is scientificaly proven, remotely logical to many people or has any justification outside my own feelings and impressions.
I have dried Herb Robert once disastrously, the rubbery stems just wouldn’t dry howver hard I tried… a bit like the stems of Ramsons (Allium ursinam) when you dry them. I have never used it in practise, except in herbal tea form for myself and even then I didn’t really continue as I should have done. Having said all that it is a plant that I love and adore and I have hung around it for the last two or three years without really getting close. A bit like a person that attracts you for some unknown reason but you take a long time to even start to get to know each other let alone deepen the relationship. However this summer with my great friend and colleague Francoise Guinois-Pillet, Herb Robert started to reveal himself or maybe its more correct to say that we were a bit more ready to take his teachings on board. I speak about him as a person, but that is the way I feel about this plant that has such a lot of character . Anyway the first meeting was very strong and quite emotional, I felt as if I was meeting a part of myself…but then this plant does teach us about relationships and aren’t all relationships a mirror of ourselves. I unfortunately didn’t take any notes about this first contact…that will teach me to think I can remember it all. I did however come face to face with this plant again shortly after in England whilst teaching at Herbfest in Somerset, yes a huge, powerful example of Geranium Robert in the wooded lane near the venue. During our three day stay, I visited him regularly and spoke about him to my herb walk group, at this point I felt that he was teaching about boundaries in relationships…sacred, personal space in relationship, instead of moving towards someone that you want to get closer to, step back into oneself and meet the person in oneself…not explaining myself very clearly here…real partnership is about two whole and seperate people who meet but retain their seperatness, there is no neediness. I don’t know if you have ever noticed that the flowers grow in twos and each flower has its own petiole, they are together but separate from each other. Read the rest of this entry »
Cathy Skipper 