Herbarium

We operate out of House No-3 on Chilarai Path, right near Basistha Chariali. It is a quiet house that we turned into a workspace for Herbarium. The yard is usually full of various plants and drying herbs, which gives the whole place a very specific earthy smell that sticks to your clothes. It is not like a regular office with cubicles and computers everywhere. Instead, we have a lot of shelves filled with glass jars and brown paper bags. Most of our day is spent sorting through leaves, roots, and seeds. It is slow work and you have to be very careful not to mix things up. We started this because we have always had an interest in what grows naturally in the ground around here. Sometimes people from the neighborhood stop by to ask what we are working on or to buy something small for their kitchen. We do not have a big sign out front, just the house number on the gate. The kitchen is where we make tea and talk about the harvest or the rain. If it rains too much, we have to move everything inside quickly so the herbs do not get moldy. It is a lot of manual labor, cleaning the plants and making sure they are dry. We do not have a marketing plan. We just like plants and want to work with them. (248 words)