Raised in southern England’s green cathedrals—where brambles were teachers, hedgehogs parishioners, and every toadstool a sermon—I grew fluent in the language of hedge and hive. The woods were my first chapel, the meadows my schoolhouse, and the hedge-dwelling wren, despite her small but mighty chorus, my first secret-keeper.

Unchartered wild ramblings carried me across the sea to America, where I spent decades as a first responder. My career left me soul-weary and these shores, although kind to me, left me with a feeling of displacement that bored into my bones and I could never quite shake. In that crucible of urgency, I learned the resilience of the human spirit—and the saving grace of my Grandmother's strong tisane recipes. With time, I turned toward gentler service: roots steeped in ancestral medicine, stories lit by hearth-flame, offerings crafted with the cascadic rhythms of nature.

At my side trots Buffy Belladonna Tenderfoot, slipped through the veiled realm of fantastical beasts to become my earth-born emissary of wonder—wrapped in fur and fire-hearted loyalty. She reminds me daily that joy is serious work, naps are sacred, and even a simple honey harvest can be a pilgrimage.

Together we tend this apothecary as keepers of kinship, where every candle, tisane, and balm is a sensory spell of remembrance—guiding us back to our wild belonging.