The Herbal Almanac

This little book began, as so many things do, with a cup of tea — chamomile, steeped too long, drunk at the kitchen table while rain pressed soft fingers against the window glass. I have been tending this cottage garden for more years than I care to count, and the herbs have been my quiet companions through all of it: the easy seasons and the difficult ones, the mornings of pure gladness and the nights when sleep would not come. What follows is not a medical text, nor a grand encyclopaedia. It is simply what I know — gathered slowly, the way herbs themselves grow, without hurry and without fuss. I offer it to you as I would offer a neighbour a cutting from the lavender: freely, warmly, and with the hope that it takes root somewhere useful.

There is a remedy for most small troubles growing quietly by the garden wall. My mother taught me which leaf soothed a cough, which flower calmed a restless night, which root eased a weary body. I have spent a lifetime tending, drying and steeping — filling brown glass bottles that line my windowsill and catch the afternoon light. In these pages I have set down all I know, with care and honesty. These are the old ways: unhurried, kind, and made by your own hands.

— Agnes