When I was a very young child, both of my grandmothers decided I was far too pale. There must be something wrong with me. So, they set to work with their home remedies to fix what ailed me.

My paternal grandmother decided I had worms. She went to the spice cabinet and pulled out the powdered sage, dumped a heaping tablespoon into a teacup and stirred in boiling water. No sugar. No honey. No cream. Just sage, sage, sage. Sage tea. It was “good fer what ails ye”. I have no words to describe how horrible it was. And, I had to sit there till I drank the whole thing. Which I did. It isn’t polite to discuss the gastric ramifications of said elixir in mixed company. Suffice it to say, the physical response was proof to my grandmother that she was correct and now I would be fine. I don’t know about worms, but I can assure you I hate sage dressing, sage sausage…anything that’s been sitting in the same cabinet as sage. Horrid stuff.

My maternal grandmother had an entirely different bit of magic in her arsenal. On the first good, warm spring day, grandma would take me hiking up into the woods behind the house. She would browse along, looking at young saplings, and before long, she’d reach down and yank one up, roots and all. Instantly the air was filled with a tangy sweetness that reminded me of root beer. She pulled two or three of these and we headed back to the house. After washing away the dirt, grandma took her trusty potato peeler and stripped away thin slices of the bark from the roots. She told me this was sassafras and it would clean my blood after the stagnant air of the winter.

Grandma placed several of the slips of bark into an old coffee cup, put some sugar on top, and poured piping hot water fresh from the rainwater cistern over it and stirred the concoction. After steeping a bit, she fished out the roots and poured in a little cream to soften and cool the tea. It was deep pink and gave off the most delightful aroma. I happily sat on the kitchen stool, “whoooo-ing” off the heat, and sipping this nectar of the gods. I was in heaven!

Needless to say, sassafras tea wins in the “good for what ails ya” category. Yes, if you Google it, there is scientific evidence if you take one of the components in sassafras and make a concentration a gazillion times stronger than you could ingest in a lifetime and inject into the abdomens of lab rats, they can get cancer. One cup in the springtime has never caused me ill effect and it’s a rite of spring for me so I’ll take my chances. There may be no proven benefits of sassafras tea, other than it can take me back to my grandma’s kitchen in one sip, no matter where I may be in the world. Sipping it here on the farm was a real treat yesterday as I sat in the sunshine and worked the crossword.

And, hey…it tasted even better in my Girl Camper mug (although, in this picture, it looks all the world like “God Camper” which I suppose is even more accurate!) that I got from the Girl Camper herself…Janine Pettit!!!

Spring…a time for renewal and growth, indeed. ❤️

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭51:10‬ ‭ESV‬‬