Through Time and Thyme: Geanina, Keeper of the Old Ways
Rooted in Earth, Memory, and Tradition
For 20 years, I taught geography, guiding students through the landscapes of the world—its rivers and mountains, its histories and cultures, its shifting terrains. Yet my own roots have always run deeper, winding through the quiet paths of the countryside, where the land itself speaks in whispers.
I am not just drawn to nature; I am of it. Wandering through forests, tracing the scent of crushed thyme beneath my fingers, gathering the wild offerings of the seasons - these are not just pastimes, but a remembering. The plants, the trees, the stillness of the land - they hold stories, and I listen.
This love of the earth is inseparable from my devotion to the old ways. The stillroom is not history to me - it is a living rhythm, an alchemy of land and hands, of fragrance and fire. The women of the past did not simply “make remedies” in their stillrooms - they wove the medicine of the earth into the fabric of daily life. Herbs were not just gathered; they were known. Waters were not just distilled; they were whispered into being. This is not knowledge I study from books. This is a language I have always understood.
Throughout the year, you will find me bringing these ancient ways to life.
- In the height of summer, I don my Tudor garb at Kentwell Hall, distilling herbs and reviving time-honored remedies before the eyes of curious onlookers.
- When the drums of jousting tournaments echo through the fields, I stand within my tent at medieval festivals, sharing the art of the apothecary with those who seek it.
- In the crisp air of winter, I craft scented treasures and ancient remedies within museum halls and historical kitchens, where the walls themselves hold memory.
- Wherever history calls, I follow - not as a reenactor of the past, but as one who carries its living thread into the present.
As a Herb Society ambassador, I am passionate about sharing not just the history, but the spirit of the herbs—their folklore, their forgotten uses, their place in the world today.
Because the old ways are not gone. They are still here, woven into the land, waiting to be remembered.
My Rural Heritage
A Life Rooted in Land and Lore
I was not taught the old ways. I was born into them.
My grandparents' hands shaped the land, their wisdom carried through seasons and hardships, their stories woven into the fabric of everything I do today.
I grew up in a world where self-sufficiency was not a lifestyle choice but a necessity. In the 1980s and 90s, during the collapse of the USSR, the village was a place untouched by modern conveniences.
- Water was drawn from the well, heavy and cold in our hands.
- Fires were kindled each morning, their warmth carrying us through the bitter winters.
- Days were spent in the fields, harvesting potatoes, sifting wheat, weeding the corn.
- Animals were tended from dawn to dusk—cows, sheep, chickens, geese, even a horse for a time.
Everything was made by hand.
Cloth woven from flax, stitched into smocks embroidered with old symbols.
Sheepskin coats thick enough to stand against the Siberian winds.
Cool rooms lined with jars of pickles, smoked meats, cheeses—the quiet abundance of a life lived close to the land.
And then, there were the plants.
We did not ‘learn’ them. We knew them.
As if they whispered their names to us before we could even speak. We had the land itself as our teacher.
- Sweet acacia flowers, bright against the summer sky.
- The nutty taste of mallow seed pods, plucked and eaten without a thought.
- The golden juice of greater celandine, pressed onto warts like the generations before us had done.
This knowledge was not taught in schools. It was passed through hands, through stories, through the very air we breathed.
Though village life was arduous, my happiest moments were always spent close to the land, beneath the vast sky, among the rivers and meadows.
And even now, decades and miles away, I find my way back.
- In the forests, gathering wild herbs beneath the watchful gaze of old trees.
- By the fire, stirring something fragrant, something ancient, something familiar.
- Under the night sky, feeling the same quiet hum of the earth beneath me.
The old ways are not lost.
They are here, held in my hands, carried in my breath, walking with me into the present.
My mum and her 5th-grade classmates, harvesting onions. Practical agricultural work was part of the school curriculum.
My grandmother Maria (on the right) and her sister in the 1950s.