The news of the day has me questioning my worth. What am I contributing to the world which has so much suffering, sadness, and need?

I mean, I garden and make skincare. Is that helpful to anyone? Is skincare important or am I part of the marketing machine that exists only to make women feel insecure so they'll keep buying stuff they don't really need? Does that mean I'm superficial? Plastic?

This was bothering me so much I was actually thinking of quitting. Then I had lunch with a friend. She is a lover of art but claims to have no creative talent. She has such style though, always wearing unique, lovely clothes. She has beautiful furniture too, and many paintings on the walls of her home. The house itself she renovated and redesigned- it's gorgeous. It's also inviting and comfortable. A place that you want to spend time in. I think she is an artist that won't let herself believe it.

Telling her my worry, she asked, "Do you enjoy it? If it makes you happy to do it, and if you help even one person feel better about the appearance of their skin, isn't that worth it?"

I found myself defending my craft saying it's also for the health of skin, not only appearance. But she got me thinking about beauty...

Beauty is defined as "something that gives pleasure to the senses or the mind". I realized we all need this to remind us of the goodness in life when the ugly side has become unbearable.

Inspired, I set out to make a most beautiful oil. Oils were the first thing I learned to make when I started studying herbalism and are still my favorite thing. I really do enjoy the doing of herbal crafting. The transformation an oil makes when infused with herbs and flowers is truly a kind of magic.

I had recently made a babassu oil steeped with cucumber and gardenia from my garden, so to this I added açai oil, jasmine, green tea, and digitata kelp. The oil had only a light scent unfortunately but did have a nice, dark green color.

Using the oil for a butter bar seemed fun, and I wanted fun to be part of this beautiful project. So I went to grab a mold, planning to make the square bars I always made, when I came across the first soap mold I had ever bought, 20 years ago. A bee and flower.

It reminded me of an encounter with a carpenter bee I'd had a few days before. The weather had been dry and 90ºF plus for days, and I noticed a male carpenter bee hanging out on the floor of my front porch. Kindof unusual. When I saw him still there hours later, I was concerned and went to get him some water.

He drank a little water and seemed to perk up. He didn't fly away though. I picked clover flowers but he wasn't interested. I grabbed a hydrangea flower, held it out to him, and he dove into it to eat. Then he started walking around on my hand and up my arm. He wouldn't get off. I had to sortof push him back onto the flower.

Still, he wouldn't leave. I thought he must be exhausted from the heat. I settled him into a pile of flowers with a small saucer of water on the table on the porch, then went back to work.

When I checked for him the next morning, he was still there. I said good morning to him and told him I was happy to see him. I feared he must be about to die but didn't know what else I could do. I headed to the garden to do the watering I needed to do, then went back to the porch.

He was gone! I was overjoyed and let myself secretly believe he had stayed only to say goodbye to me. Talk about beautiful :)

So, the old bee and flower mold was the one I chose for my butter bars. I combined the green oil with kokum butter, cupuaçu butter, and laurel wax. The color is a little funky. They're really rich and moisturizing though, and will go a long way towards keeping my sun- and garden-ravaged skin in shape.

What do you think? How do they look?

True, they didn't turnout perfect. But then, you don't have to be perfect to be beautiful.