I’ve recently started reading again. It’s been quite a while since I last sat down and committed myself to read a new book. I’ve written way more than I have read in the past few years, and I didn’t realize how much I loved and missed reading.

My reading life looks a lot different than it did back in the day, and I have had to come to terms with it. I once read 600-page books in a day and a half. It now takes about 2 months for a book of the same size because I only really have time to read and get into it before bed. I become absorbed in the world on the pages and easily tune out the world around me. I’m sure you can imagine why I don’t read during the day with a three-year-old son. Not to mention the adulting that must be done that takes up most of my life. But I digress.

I made a friend in the woman at my local convenience store, and she turned me on to Juliet Marillier and her Sevenwaters series. I finished the first book a few days ago and have started reading the second. You guys, that book was amazing, and the second is already good. I’m going to have to buy my own copies because I will be wanting to read them again. This series is a historical fantasy based around the year 1000 or so in Ireland and the surrounding area. It’s filled with Celtic lore (which I’m a total nerd for) and is apparently a retelling of a fairy tale I need to know about. You also get to see how religious beliefs affected relationships back in those days. In this case, British Christianity versus Celtic paganism.

But you know what this first book really did? It sparked my love for plants once more. I had become weighed down in life and stopped studying the plants I find so fascinating. My focus has been on other things. My notes have been left untouched for the better part of a year. But the young protagonist of Daughter of the Forest is a healer who fell in love with plants at a very young age and taught herself everything she needed to know to become the village healer at the wee age of 12. This book actually mentions plants by name, and of course, I knew what they were used for, so those scenes had more meaning for me. It was amazing.

The smoldering ember in my heart that holds my love of plants was reignited as I read Daughter of the Forest, so now, not only do I have a series of books to read and look forward to every night before bed, I am starting what I have dubbed a One Moon Herb Study. It’s basically where I take a herb and study it for a month (or a full moon cycle), then compile all my notes and publish a blog post for you lovely people to read…but because I’m obsessive, I’m doing two plants a month! They are all plants that grow wild around me or that I can easily grow in the garden. I want to know all the things about what is available to me for my own purposes. But I know you guys like to read my herbal notes!

Some posts will be over plants that can be found on my Herbal Series page, but they will be more extensive, and I will most likely either replace or archive the older posts eventually. I will start my study on each New Moon for the next 12 months. I will have a blog post on everything I learned in that time the day before the next New Moon when I start two new herbs. The first post will be on March 20, 2023–which also happens to be the first day of Spring. I will start my study on Chickweed and Marshmallow on February 20, 2023. The last set of blog posts for this series will be on February 8, 2024.

One Moon Study links will work when posts are made public:

Plants that already have a post about them are links to those posts to get you through the waiting. There will be some premium content on these posts, but guess what? A monthly subscription is only $2.99! There will be some Premium content on the new posts as well. You can check out my page, The Wonders of the Pine Tree, for lots of other cool information that I spent years researching that will not be included on this round of research.

I’m not taking topics, as I already have laid out what I want to accomplish. I hope you enjoy the journey with me, and who knows what we will get into along the way.

Many blessings,
Emma Lee Joy