Timestamp: Late Fall, 513 AV
Kavala was definitely restless. If the baby didn’t come soon, she was going to loose her ever loving mind, of that there was no doubt. And so, along with light duty cleaning and puttering around the house – whatever the children and her family would let her get away with – she was inventorying their stores and stalking them up on common medicines. She’d already went through and checked their inventory in the healing clinic, noting what needed stalking up on and what didn’t. She was particularly concerned with getting things the baby would need that would help both of them make it through the birth and then the hectic time afterwards.
And one thing Kavala did notice was that they were almost completely out of witch hazel. Witch hazel was amazing, at least in Kavala’s mind, because it had all sorts of things going for it that babies and new mothers needed. For one thing, it was great with acne, which while that didn’t exactly fit on her list of needs, Riaris’ young sister was spending a great deal of time over and she was getting to that age. Larik and Cadra were already there, fighting their constantly changing skin. The baby would need the witch hazel because it was great for soothing and healing diaper rash. And all that took to apply was dabbing it on the rash spots and the skin would improve immediately. Witch hazel was often good for reducing bags under the eyes and hemorrhoids around the rear. And interestingly enough, she made the same smoothing cream for both.
The compound was also great for varicose veins relief, which really needed no additional medicinal treatment save soaking a warm cloth in the tincture and laying it on the legs. The various forms of plant contact poisons, like ivy and oak, were soothed by witch hazel. There was nothing worse than the itching and swelling of those contact poisons. The witch hazel helped immediately. Then there were the various poxes that often went around hitting children and young adults. Those were often soothed by witch hazel, especially when the poxes blistered and oozed. Those things were all related to acne as well. That soothing relief took a bit more time though. One had to mix lavender oil, lemon oil, bergamot oil, peppermint oil, carrot seed oil, and aloe Vera extract to the witch hazel and then bind it all together with honey to get that done. Kavala never kept that medication on hand because it had a very short shelf life before it became rancid. Making it ahead of time was all but useless and frustrating when one pulled it out and then saw that it had gone bad. So, rather than waste so much, she often mixed it up on the fly – keeping all the components in the philtering lab separate but ready to be combined.
And though she was a twice marked Rak’keli healer, Witch Hazel did something to the body’s circulation of blood, and that meant bruises and contusions, even flat out contact road rashes healed faster. And that lead to witch hazels’ soothing properties. It cured razor burn, sun burn, and dried skin. It helped stave off infection in cuts, soothed bug bites by removing the itching, and last but not least, it did something to the body so that males and females stopped perspiring. The agent was called Deodorant, and Kavala definitely had plans to make some for the sweaty men at The Sanctuary.
So she decided early on that today would be a day of philtering and herbalism, making some witch hazel, and also some green blood tincture which would go into the deodorant recipe. If she got anything else made during the day, it would be a bonus.
Kavala was lucky too. There was a very large witch hazel shrub Aweston had transplanted onto the Sanctuary grounds when they’d found it growing wild in the fridge forest. With careful maintenance, they’d let it get big in the medicinal garden so it was literally outside the clinic door and hence the philtering lab, for Kavala to access. The woman had always admired the shrub because she saw it as a rebel in the plant world. Blooming in late Fall and well throughout winter not stopping until late spring, it was a gorgeous addition to her garden in a time when everything else had lost its leaves. It had a riotous color show because its leaves turned yellow in the fall and stayed that way throughout the winter, never dropping. The flowers were a four inch long golden yellow burst of color that had petals shaped like banners. Everything about the plant was fancy and to Kavala, a gift because one could never miss the plant nor mistake it for something else. The gods, perhaps even Caiyha herself, wanted mankind to take note of it.
Her directions from her philtering book were easily followed, so she carried a basket out with her clippers and garden gloves to start pruning the plant. She cut one pound of fresh twigs from the shrug, knowing it wasn’t possible to make the witch hazel brew until the flowers had bursts forth. One never tried to make the astringent substance from non-flowering shrubs.. it did not work, and resulted in a tonic that was very weak and lackluster. So while its juices were flowing, Kavala chopped at the shrub happily, cutting down the twigs into very cartable pieces and dropping them into her basket. When she got back to the lab, she stripped off the leaves and flowers, and set them aside. She then took the twigs and began mulching them with her pruning clippers. Then she placed the chopped twigs in a large soup pot to boil.
She covered the twigs with distilled water from the lab (they had a lot of it as byproduct of all their distilling) and then left it o the hearth until it began to boil. She then pulled it far enough off the heat to where the boil dropped down to a shimmer, and then left it for eight bells. It needed to really get all the water dissolved and evaporated out of it so the mixture would be as strong as possible.
While she was waiting for the witch hazel to cook, Kavala set up the distiller, which she’d put the remaining mixture through when it was time, and moved on to see about creating some some other things in the lab to kill the eight hours she was needing until the witch hazel was done.
Kavala was definitely restless. If the baby didn’t come soon, she was going to loose her ever loving mind, of that there was no doubt. And so, along with light duty cleaning and puttering around the house – whatever the children and her family would let her get away with – she was inventorying their stores and stalking them up on common medicines. She’d already went through and checked their inventory in the healing clinic, noting what needed stalking up on and what didn’t. She was particularly concerned with getting things the baby would need that would help both of them make it through the birth and then the hectic time afterwards.
And one thing Kavala did notice was that they were almost completely out of witch hazel. Witch hazel was amazing, at least in Kavala’s mind, because it had all sorts of things going for it that babies and new mothers needed. For one thing, it was great with acne, which while that didn’t exactly fit on her list of needs, Riaris’ young sister was spending a great deal of time over and she was getting to that age. Larik and Cadra were already there, fighting their constantly changing skin. The baby would need the witch hazel because it was great for soothing and healing diaper rash. And all that took to apply was dabbing it on the rash spots and the skin would improve immediately. Witch hazel was often good for reducing bags under the eyes and hemorrhoids around the rear. And interestingly enough, she made the same smoothing cream for both.
The compound was also great for varicose veins relief, which really needed no additional medicinal treatment save soaking a warm cloth in the tincture and laying it on the legs. The various forms of plant contact poisons, like ivy and oak, were soothed by witch hazel. There was nothing worse than the itching and swelling of those contact poisons. The witch hazel helped immediately. Then there were the various poxes that often went around hitting children and young adults. Those were often soothed by witch hazel, especially when the poxes blistered and oozed. Those things were all related to acne as well. That soothing relief took a bit more time though. One had to mix lavender oil, lemon oil, bergamot oil, peppermint oil, carrot seed oil, and aloe Vera extract to the witch hazel and then bind it all together with honey to get that done. Kavala never kept that medication on hand because it had a very short shelf life before it became rancid. Making it ahead of time was all but useless and frustrating when one pulled it out and then saw that it had gone bad. So, rather than waste so much, she often mixed it up on the fly – keeping all the components in the philtering lab separate but ready to be combined.
And though she was a twice marked Rak’keli healer, Witch Hazel did something to the body’s circulation of blood, and that meant bruises and contusions, even flat out contact road rashes healed faster. And that lead to witch hazels’ soothing properties. It cured razor burn, sun burn, and dried skin. It helped stave off infection in cuts, soothed bug bites by removing the itching, and last but not least, it did something to the body so that males and females stopped perspiring. The agent was called Deodorant, and Kavala definitely had plans to make some for the sweaty men at The Sanctuary.
So she decided early on that today would be a day of philtering and herbalism, making some witch hazel, and also some green blood tincture which would go into the deodorant recipe. If she got anything else made during the day, it would be a bonus.
Kavala was lucky too. There was a very large witch hazel shrub Aweston had transplanted onto the Sanctuary grounds when they’d found it growing wild in the fridge forest. With careful maintenance, they’d let it get big in the medicinal garden so it was literally outside the clinic door and hence the philtering lab, for Kavala to access. The woman had always admired the shrub because she saw it as a rebel in the plant world. Blooming in late Fall and well throughout winter not stopping until late spring, it was a gorgeous addition to her garden in a time when everything else had lost its leaves. It had a riotous color show because its leaves turned yellow in the fall and stayed that way throughout the winter, never dropping. The flowers were a four inch long golden yellow burst of color that had petals shaped like banners. Everything about the plant was fancy and to Kavala, a gift because one could never miss the plant nor mistake it for something else. The gods, perhaps even Caiyha herself, wanted mankind to take note of it.
Her directions from her philtering book were easily followed, so she carried a basket out with her clippers and garden gloves to start pruning the plant. She cut one pound of fresh twigs from the shrug, knowing it wasn’t possible to make the witch hazel brew until the flowers had bursts forth. One never tried to make the astringent substance from non-flowering shrubs.. it did not work, and resulted in a tonic that was very weak and lackluster. So while its juices were flowing, Kavala chopped at the shrub happily, cutting down the twigs into very cartable pieces and dropping them into her basket. When she got back to the lab, she stripped off the leaves and flowers, and set them aside. She then took the twigs and began mulching them with her pruning clippers. Then she placed the chopped twigs in a large soup pot to boil.
She covered the twigs with distilled water from the lab (they had a lot of it as byproduct of all their distilling) and then left it o the hearth until it began to boil. She then pulled it far enough off the heat to where the boil dropped down to a shimmer, and then left it for eight bells. It needed to really get all the water dissolved and evaporated out of it so the mixture would be as strong as possible.
While she was waiting for the witch hazel to cook, Kavala set up the distiller, which she’d put the remaining mixture through when it was time, and moved on to see about creating some some other things in the lab to kill the eight hours she was needing until the witch hazel was done.