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Skullcap, lemon balm, chamomile, rose. Dried, packed loose in a clean pint jar.

Three parts vegetable glycerin to one part distilled water, poured while you stir so the glycerin actually moves into the plant instead of sitting on top of it. Cap it, date it, dark cupboard. Four to six weeks, shake it whenever you remember. Strain through cloth, squeeze hard, bottle. Half a teaspoon under the tongue at the hour your brain decides to relitigate 2019.

Two honest cautions. Buy skullcap from a source you trust — the market has a long history of adulteration with germander, which is hard on the liver. And chamomile sits in the ragweed family, so if that family has ever closed your throat, leave it out and let the other three carry it.

What do you reach for at three in the morning?

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Grey alder — Alnus incana, feàrna. For the throat that has been shouting. Or clenching. Or swallowing things it shouldn't have to.

Dried inner bark only — small pieces, aged several months minimum, never fresh. One teaspoon to a cup of water, simmered ten minutes, strained, cooled to warm. Gargle and spit. As an external wash it's good on weepy skin and old-fashioned foot soaks.

Read this part twice. Fresh bark will make you vomit — that is precisely why the traditional preparation insists on drying and aging. High in tannins, which bind iron and blunt oral medications, so leave two hours either side of anything you take on a schedule. Skip it in pregnancy, if you're anemic, or if you're on medication you can't afford to have dulled. And be certain of your identification — do not confuse alder with buckthorn, which is a violent purgative. If there's any doubt, buy the dried bark rather than stripping a tree you're eighty percent sure about.

What do you reach for when your throat's been used hard?

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For the tooth that starts up on a Friday night, when every dentist in the county has gone home until Monday.

One or two drops of clove oil into a teaspoon of whatever carrier's in the cupboard — olive, coconut. Cotton ball or the corner of a clean cloth, held against the gum by the sore tooth, a few minutes. Never neat from the bottle. Never swallowed. Not for children.

Clòbha — clove. The compound is eugenol and it's a real topical anesthetic; dentists were using it long before anybody patented anything, and a diluted version is still in dental cements.

It doesn't repair a thing. It buys you the weekend. That's the honest claim, and a tooth that goes quiet is not a tooth that healed.

What do you reach for when the clinic's shut?

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Caineal. Ceylon cinnamon is the soft-barked, many-layered kind that shatters between your fingers instead of the hard single curl sitting in most supermarket jars.

Grate it fresh onto oatmeal, into the coffee grounds before you brew, over roasted sweet potato while the pan is still ticking. It's warm rather than hot, floral where cassia is blunt, and it carries none of cassia's coumarin load — which matters if cinnamon is a daily thing in your kitchen and not a December thing.

Traditional use runs toward the digestive and the blood-sugar-steadying. The modern evidence is modest, real, and not a substitute for medicine.

Buy a whole stick. Break it. Smell it.

What's the one pantry swap you'd never go back on?

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