She barely made it.

I lost everything else – the cabin in the redwoods, the farm, the dogs, the truck, the life that made sense. What I could carry into a flat above Chinatown amounted to maybe a quarter of what we had. Probably less. Among the last things I loaded – the plants. And of those, only one Salvia divinorum survived the move.

I was given this plant in 2007. She was four feet tall, thriving under the redwood canopy – ska María Pastora, the diviner’s sage, She of the Shepherdess. I used to propagate her, take cuttings, give them away like medicine. She’s been my ally plant for almost twenty years.

Grief doesn’t just take the person. It takes your ability to care for anything. The blinds in this flat have been down for years – some halfway, one completely shut. Sunlight felt like a demand. So everything in here starved quietly alongside me. The orchids. The staghorn fern. The night-blooming cereus. And her.

About two weeks ago I pulled the blinds up.

I started misting her several times a day. Got her an indoor grow light. Fed her what I had – orchid food – then ordered Fox Farm nutrients. The real stuff.

She’s woody now. Hardened. Two branches held on but the nodes are struggling to push through all that old calcified growth. I pruned her hard. Took three cuttings and set them in water glasses with sandwich bags tented over the tops for humidity. If they root – three new plants from a mother who almost didn’t make it.

And then – a tiny shoot. Straight up from the soil at the base. New growth from the root crown.

She’s not done.

Today I transferred her from a 1-gallon pot into a 3-gallon fabric smart pot. The soil mix – Fox Farm Ocean Forest supplemented with extra perlite for drainage, roughly 3 cups per 3-gallon pot. She wants well-draining soil that stays moist but never waterlogged, slightly acidic, rich in organic matter. Soaked her, let her drain, back under the lights.

For the cuttings – clean cuts just below a node, lower leaves stripped, placed in water. Change it daily. Roots in about two weeks. Once they reach half an inch I’ll transplant into soil and tent them again until they establish.

She grows wild on the forest floor in the cloud forests of Oaxaca. Partial shade. High humidity. She almost never sets viable seed – propagation is by cuttings, by hand, by relationship. You can’t grow this plant without tending it. She doesn’t survive on her own.

Nothing does.

Salvia divinorum is fully legal in California.