herbal junque

This morning there was a huge antique/yard sale in a small town nearby. Every house throws their stuff out on the yard every Memorial Day, and there are large fields of flea market tables on either end of the town. My latest obsession is finding old medicinal herbal cures and packaging. The boxes are full of herbs from the Indiana Botanic Gardens. There was Blue Cohosh, Red Root, Borage, and Violet leaf. The bottle of Omega Oil is mostly chloroform. The Dill's Balm contains oils of sassafras and clove, turpentine, myrrh, cayenne pepper, camphor, madder and ammonia water. The throat lozenges also contain chloroform, in addition to cubeb, licorice, linseed, capsicum, anise, acacia, peppermint and sugar. I also found a beautiful tin from Anusol Hemorrhoidal Suppositories, containing Bismuth and "Nicaraguan Medicinal Balsam" with zinc oxide and cacoa butter. I think these are just fascinating.

On Saturday I checked out the Baltimore Herb Festival. The festival wasn't held last year, and we were all worried about how it would do - having lost momentum. Unfortunately we arrived as a storm blew through. We got to spend a good bit of time catching up with Barb and Roger Steele from Alloway Creek Garden while standing beneath a giant holly tree, but eventually gave up on shopping. Most of the vendors were closing up shop due to the weather. Those we spoke to were thrilled with the turnout AND with the buying spirit of the crowd. That is great news! In fact, when the storm passed they went on to sell much more. As for us.... well it stopped raining as we got back onto the highway. Oh well.