HUGE thank you to all the enthusiastic folks who filled the Stiles Center for our first Saturday Afternoon Tea honoring Aunt Clara Brown. To Pimpero from Malawi and Faith from Nigeria for helping bake the most delicious lemon poppy-seed pound cake. To “Fin & Fur” the garden stewardesses who initiated the Stiles Gardens pictured below with leaders from the SPUNK youth science club. To World Denver for bringing members of the Pan African Youth Leadership program & to Kala Green for keeping it together. To Thatcher and Jakobi for putting their backs behind the shovel and for being such great hosts. To Spirit of the Sun for sending over a huge box of Heritage corn seeds!! We will distribute them to community members who would like to grow out corn this season during our May 13th tea & plant exchange.
And to all the grandmothers who came and shared the love..
Aunt Clara Brown was a healer. She knew plants that were used along the Underground Railroad, learning much about indigenous plant medicine from her Cherokee father. When she found her way to freedom and moved west to Colorado, she learned about local plant relationships from her friend, Jenny Jones, an Arapaho friend who moved into the city of Denver. Aunt Clara welcomed Barney Ford amongst countless other African Americans who arrived in the west with warm meals and places to lay their heads. Her medicine was made up of love as much as the plants that filled her larders. We honor the history of Aunt Clara Brown with plants used along the Underground Railroad as well as medicinal plants traditionally used by Arapaho.
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