Witchy Balm

The Owls invited me over that month for another experiment in domestic alchemy: making lip balm from scratch. It was the same trio I had traveled with to Rhode Island for bundle dyeing — their kitchens and studios are always half workshop, half sanctuary.

We started with beeswax and oils, heating them gently in a makeshift double boiler. Then came the flowers: petals dried from summer gardens, infused for their scent and their color. Lavender, rose, calendula — little fragments of sun and soil reimagined as protection for winter lips.

Making balm is slow but communal. You stir while someone pours, someone else sets out the tins. The fragrance rises into the air, a mixture of wax and memory. It is less like following a recipe and more like following a lineage: women, artists, gardeners, all leaving their touch in each step.

When the balms set, we labeled them with scraps of paper, names scrawled by hand. The tins looked almost too pretty to use, as if they belonged in a museum of minor arts. But the point was not display; the point was utility. The first application was the test — smooth, fragrant, soft on the mouth.

I loved how the process echoed the natural dyes: a translation of flowers into another medium, a collaboration with plants that carried their presence into daily life. Donna Haraway might say it again: a companion practice, binding species together through care.

The Owls reminded me that making things isn’t always about art objects. Sometimes it’s about simple survival, made beautiful. A salve you can carry in your pocket, and in carrying it, carry the garden too.