Rachel Shackleton's blog

During the hot June week, I was sitting in my garden enjoying my lunch pondering on which herb to feature in this month’s blog. Starring me in the face was and still is the beautiful Lemon Melissa, a calming herb commonly known as Lemon Balm, or by Melissa officinalis, its Latin name. “Melissa” comes from the Greek for bee and refers to the great attraction the plant holds for bees during its short flowering season.

Foeniculum vulgare is a member of the Apiaceae family. It is a warm, spicy sweet herb that has affinity to the liver, kidneys, spleen – the seat of the immune system as well as the stomach. The main actions are to regulate Qi or Chi (depending on your spelling). Qi is the seat of energy within the body.

"Tossing doughnuts, fritters or fried dumplings in fennel sugar adds grown-up complexity without diminishing the indulgence factor”

Yotam Ottolenghi

Walking around the Oxfordshire countryside last week, I couldn't help notice the many fields of yellow at different stages of flowering. Of course, a very familiar sight at this time of year, not only in Oxfordshire, but across the country. Rape has many benefits to the farmer, firstly it controls blackgrass through stale seedbeds and then because of the earliness of maturity it provides an early entry for winter wheat, helping to spread the workload, free up storage as well as the farmer’s cash flow. Rape seed is grown for animal feed, vegetable seed oil and biodiesel.

With the onset of spring comes one of our most common and prolific weeds, the stinging nettle. Many of us can relate to the nettle as mostly an unpleasant experience when inadvertently coming into contact and receiving a tingling, itching sensation to the skin for hours to come. Often the itching and tingling is joined by heat and becomes more active at night when you are trying to sleep. The more nettles that manage to sting you the longer it lasts and the more intensive the tingling. It is this very stinging that has the ability to stimulate circulation and relieve pain and swelling.

Marriage is not just for one special day, your wedding day. It is for a lifetime. As Dr Joe Dispenza said, “In a marriage work on yourself instead of turning the relationship into work.” Why is it that so much planning and preparation go into one special day, with limited thought and preparation for making the rest of your lives together literally the happiest time of your life?