‘Gardens, kitchens, recipes and remedies’ is the phrase that has guided our collection of articles in this issue. We do not often reflect on the story of the place of food, gardens, flowers, and cures in our past, even have and continue to represent important parts of everyday life. The stories of remedies in this issue begin with the collaboration of Conrad Stoesz, Archivist, and Paul Dyck, English Professor. Their article focusses on a book in the library of the midwife, Katherine Thiessen. We learn about the intricacies of conveying the knowledge of healing powers possessed by a variety of plants. A short vignette about an instrument, the Life Awakener, whose irritations in one part of the body were believed to drive out pain and even illness in another, and the somewhat comical prescriptions for various maladies found by Ralph Friesen in his grandfather’s diaries offer us further windows into a time when medical science did not claim dominion over the knowledge of what to do when we did not feel quite right.