Where it all started…
I have just accepted a speaking engagement for June.
For many entrepreneurs ‘speaking engagement’ might conjure up images of conference halls filled with hundreds of eager high-ticket participants waiting to hear a rousing delivery, and a call to action, and a definite ‘kerching’, etc., etc..
But for me, this speaking engagement is going to be much cosier.
It is to a Gardening Club.
I haven’t gone out to speak to the general public for several years because I just got too busy helping colleagues get the School of Herbal Medicine’s training course accredited, and then for the school to achieve Charity status. Those two things were a lot of work for us all the while we were continuing to teach the students.
So, heading into semi-retirement I thought, why not?
Maybe 10 or 15 people will turn up, and in the great scheme of things some successful entrepreneurs might scoff and say, ‘why bother’?
I won’t receive a high fee, I am not taking books to sign, or produce to sell and I think the question why bother, is a valid one.
The reason I got interested in herbal medicine in the beginning was because I was gardening while reading books on social history. I was a young Mum at the time, and curious to know what mothers did when their children got sick before the NHS was available, and they couldn’t afford the doctor’s fee.
I found out [while I was weeding the garden] that many of the plants I saw as pests in my borders, and which I threw away, used to be used medicinally. Well, they still are, but I didn’t know that then.
The situation was this: I was digging up medicinal plants, throwing them on the compost heap as if they had no value, and then going to the local pharmacy to buy medicine for my family that I could have made with the plants that I was throwing away.
What I really wanted was a few weekend courses on how to make medicinal stuff from plants at a very low-key level, like blackberry vinegar for colds, and Rosemary oil to aid memory. I couldn’t find any.
Instead ended up on a degree course in herbal medicine that turned me [years and years later] into a practitioner and eventually a tutor.
And it all started in my garden. So, I have a soft spot of gardeners.
The knowledge that I found out about medicinal weeds is stuff that I want to pass on.
It might just help someone avoid years of study, when all they want to know is how to make a cough syrup with fresh thyme…
