Hope Valley Herbal Solutions

17/08/2026

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcI6uiFsbL8/?igsh=NzE5dXRxYzZmMnFt&igsi=NzE5dXRxYzZmMnFt

17/08/2026

07/08/2026

Please give this noble w**d a place in your garden and welcome it by the roadside and pavements… Feverfew.🥰
It’s a real survivor, great for our struggling pollinators and can transform migraine sufferers lives, taken consistently for a few months…
Do you think the flowers look like pretty little communicating heads, but dinted like they have a headache? Or is that just my overactive imagination?! 🤣💖🌷🌻
CAUTION: Chewing on the fresh leaves, can irritate mucous membranes… Traditionally, they were eaten in thickly buttered sandwiches. As a medical Herbalist, I tend to prescribe it in tea or powder form

31/07/2026

A hot and sticky few weeks extracting the honey harvest. A good year for Honey, but Very few swarms or new queens… This is really worrying!

If anyone would like any delicious organically produced, herb-smoked honey 🍯 or cut-comb honey, PM me, I have over 100 jars!!!💖🌷🐝

If you want to help our Bees through this drought heat wave, don’t feed them sugar-water, except for emergency bee A&E. Far better to:
🌷plant bee friendly flowers, and water them instead of your lawn!
🐝 one less shower / washing machine load a week & water your pollinator flowers with that.
💖keep a watering can in the kitchen & fill it through the day those times you normally let water run down the drain…. And water those flower!
🌻don’t w**d-kill the bee-friendly flowering w**ds even if they grow where you don’t want them. They can be great at surviving difficult weather & can be a lifeline for our pollinators.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder & learning to love these native or naturalized survivors is the way forward! I would much rather see pretty native flowers popping up between patio stones, by walls, along roadsides than barren blank heat trap, or chemical brown poisoned plant corpses….

We’ve just had the council round on quads w**dspraying all our pretty village roadside plants hence the restrained rant! Surely better ways to spend our hard earned council tax?!?

29/03/2026

Interesting…

For the first time, scientists have captured high-speed video showing trees emitting a faint, electrical glow during thunderstorms. This extraordinary phenomenon, filmed in the Blue Ridge Mountains by researchers from Penn State University, reveals that trees can generate sparks in strong electric fields without being struck by lightning. The effect, known as corona discharge, produces a blue glow at the tips of branches and leaves. It occurs when the storm’s electric field is strong enough to ionize air molecules near the sharp edges of trees, causing electrons to move and emit energy in a plasma form. Unlike lightning, corona discharge is “cool” electricity, producing light without heat or damage to the tree.

This discovery not only offers a mesmerizing visual but also highlights the broader environmental impact of forests. The corona discharges generate hydroxyl radicals, key molecules that help clean the atmosphere by breaking down pollutants and greenhouse gases like methane. This suggests that forests may play a more significant role in maintaining the Earth’s electrical balance and reducing greenhouse gas concentrations than previously recognized.

The intensity of the glow varies among tree species and is influenced by factors such as canopy size and leaf shape. Evergreen conifers, with their pointed needle-like leaves, are particularly efficient at concentrating the electric field, producing brighter glows compared to broadleaf trees. Over time, as trees grow, their corona activity can increase, further enhancing their atmospheric impact.

Historically, sailors have observed similar glowing effects on ship masts during storms, but only now has modern technology confirmed the phenomenon in natural forested environments. By combining high-speed cameras and sensitive sensors, researchers have captured a visual testament to the hidden electrical activity of trees, providing a new perspective on the dynamic interactions between vegetation and the atmosphere. This study not only deepens our understanding of thunderstorms but also emphasizes the importance of forests in sustaining Earth’s environmental and atmospheric health.

12/02/2026

Something I've been mulling over recently. Your friend or therapist’s small business – hairdresser, crafts, PT, tree surgery, herbalist – might have 100, 500, 1000 followers on FB/Instagram. You’d assume that when they post something, all those followers would see it, right? But think – when did you last see so and so post – when you then go and click on them you realise there’s loads you’ve missed!

You may have heard of social media “algorithms”. Small businesses do all the work trying to make interesting posts and then tear their hair out as the analytics show that it only turned up in 40 people’s feed, despite them having 2000 followers. This is (I think) how it works.

When a small business posts, without paying to “boost” the post, it gets released to a handful of followers, this seems MAYBE to be the people who react most often – liking, sharing or commenting upon the posts. So my husband always sees my posts (to be fair he knows he’s in trouble if he doesn’t) and I know I have a handful of loyal followers who will almost always like/share/comment (you don’t know how grateful I am to you). When “enough” people interact – and that seems to be random – apparently FB/Instagram will release the post to more people, so another batch of followers will see it and so on. I think. So, yes, you might not get the post in the first place!

When you comment on your friend’s small business post, *your* friends might see that comment in their feed. Even if you just write something non-committal like “lovely photo” or “interesting!”. So this means more people will see the post = advertising.

It seems as well that FB/Insta are more likely to release a post to more people if there is a photo of a person in it. Hence occasional photos of me going “oh look, I’m on a beach”. (I hate doing this, I’m not a photo-sharing kind of person, but it’s a necessary evil!).

So anyway, I just thought I’d write a bit about this, not just to help me, but so you can help other small businesses you know. Often we can’t afford to advertise very much and social media is the only way. It’s “free” advertising technically but not free in terms of the time taken. I don’t think all this is common knowledge so please feel free to share! Like! Comment! 😄

And lastly THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your support no matter what form it takes, I am always so very grateful!

25/11/2025



25/11/2025

Blackberry: tonal value in leaves… Botanical Art with Jennie Hinton 🥰 🍃🍁.

25/11/2025

Prickly & tangly, but generous & so good for you: do you know anyone like that? Blackberry: an excercise in tonal values of leaves, a new concept for me on my botanical Art class adventure…thanks Jennie Hinton, talented artist & teacher🥰🍃🍁

28/10/2025

Strawberry Tree… beautiful, delicious & medicinal…. Italian National Tree, Madrid Coat of arms, my new Muse & buddy, tasty treats growing down the road…