I thought originally about sage/ salvia but on reflection, and as I am using it extensively for a current health effort, rose/ la rosa came through and wanted to be spoken to. Roses, particularly wild and self-sown types, old tea roses and suchlike, have become increasingly important in my life recently - and they are absolutely the plant that I am right now most grateful for.

Roses were not such a key medicine or even an ornamental in my life and garden, until I began exploring pelvic steaming and going deep into the healing of my womb - after which, I cannot imagine my vibrant and peaceful health without this blessed plant wisdom...

In fact, the tangible absence of roses from my life may even go back as far as my gran's garden when I was growing up on the Isle of Arran in Scotland: I loved nature, plants, gardens and everything natural... but had this weird disconnect that happened, related to my gran's gardening catalogues, when I first saw pictures of flowers in lists of seeds and plants for sale. Something about this presentation of flowers there felt really wrong, like cheating or something! In my child-spirit, it felt like my gran had stolen these flowers from somewhere, and put them in her garden! And this made me feel an aversion to ornamental plants of all kinds. Hmmm... It took me decades to get into flowers as a food and a medicine - and as purely ornamental (if such a thing exists as being solely nice to look at!)...

I say 'tangible absence' because roses really should be central to womb-healing and to any woman's daily deep self-care; the rose is intimately linked to the sacred feminine and to women's health and spirituality. I came to this through my own intimate relationship with the plant, but there are obviously myriad mentions of roses throughout history, being used both medicinally and as a symbol (e.g. in art and religion) of the power of the feminine. The oil of the rose is extremely rare and profoundly expensive - and powerfully healing, relaxing, realigning, sensual, seductive... I've heard many folks in my life mention how hard roses are to tend to, but in my own experience, certainly here in Italy, they are grown (mostly by themselves!) freely and abundantly all around.

I began using rose as one of the first herbs I steamed with: pelvic steaming has been a staple of my healing from chronic issues in my womb and pelvis - all done at home and without any interference from modern medicine. I added rose petals (from bushes in the neglected gardens below my house) to a basic mix of sage, rosemary and nettle, and I so loved the smell and the calm and centred state that it brought to me, that I began harvesting all the petals I could find nearby, and storing them for epic candlelit baths, teas, and steaming sessions.

Like many herbs sacred to the womb and to women, the rose has her own voice and rich transmissions, if we're able to slow down enough to hear them. My relationship with the plants helped me tune in; when sitting on the steaming pot, or drinking tea and marveling at the panoramic view and immersing in birdsong, I feel the Knowing coming through the taste and smell and look of the rose flowers in particular: her capacity to tame hectic energies, her opening of the lineage of all women - before, after and all around right now: the shifting into the circular and the horizontal (from the hierarchical and competitive), the sentience and the empathic world.

Often I have the sense, in a quiet moment alone, of one or another of the plants below my house 'calling' me, and I pop down to commune a little with the particular one. The gardens are all either in a state of neglect, or of rare visits by their owners, so communing with the plants is not an issue even if it is not my garden!

The one rose bush that I do 'own', is mostly what the above photos are from - bar the basket of petals which are from an old tea rose down in the wilder parts of the gardens... I bought my rose bush about 9 yrs ago, and she's now a solid large bush which flowers throughout the year. Her petals began quite white, but recently have taken on a pink and even a deep magenta blush. I love how plants and flowers change over time, according to their environment! The above photo is of when I first pruned the lemon tree back hard and below that you can see, in amongst the poppies; the small bush which now bushes right out into the street and reaches up into the lemon tree.

My gratitude for rose is embodied and lived; I gift my blood back to this rose, and to other plants in the gardens below. I pray and give thanks, add mulch and trim for optimal growth. I dry the petals out under the beautiful Italian sunshine, and then store them in big glass jars which are reused again and again. I bless and give gratitude as I ingest or enjoy my bathing in the petals... My pleasure is gratitude returned to Gaia Sophia.

Love and healing to you! Thank you all at @theherbalhive for this challenge! Looking forward to reading through your posts!

Clare.