Lucretia Van Dyke

I always laugh.

I'm like, at this point in my life, I'm so into herbalism that if you can't talk about plants, I don't really know what to talk about anymore.

One of her favorite trees is the mimosa tree.

It has these Dr. Seuss-like pink flowers on it.

And then I go sit with the plant and I hold the flowers together.

And I'm like laying there with the plant and staring at it and all it becomes like this full circle thing.

So a beautiful practice, I feel like, is imagine how all these roots are touching and watering each other.

And if we need to, to like imagine, you know, even energetically, like my family lives in North Carolina and I'm in Louisiana now.

So energetically, when I imagine that tree and touching that tree, I can imagine myself and my spirit being at home with them.

Let me feel your medicine.

Let me understand your medicine.

Because that's a lot how the original people did it.

It's not like they had a book.

way, way, way back in the day, that told them, this plant does this, this plant does that.

And it has been...

you know, cut in half by a highway.

And it's also been, you know, very gentrified.

I try to imagine, like, the old Creole neighborhoods and how, you know, people of color came together and watched each other's children and built what is now revered today as the birthplace of jazz.

Like, those trees have heard some of the original jazz greats ever.

She thinks of generations of kids playing and families sprawled out under the trees.