Stinging nettles as a houseplant?? (and pics of glorious chaos)

Why not?

I've grown dandelions in pots on my kitchen windowsill - and let me tell you, a bitter/sweet fresh leaf to nibble on was a very welcome gift in January, (and February, March, and most of April) while I waited for spring. So why not nettles?

I can't imagine I'll get enough nettles for eatin', but that's not why I'd be growing them anyway. What I want them for is this:

little hypodermic needles of joint pain relief!!

Medicine chest - wild lettuce (Lactuca spp.)

Whenever I try to write about wild lettuce (the various Lactuca species) I find myself getting all tangled up in myth-busting. There's a lot of b.s. questionable information floats around the interwebz when it comes to how and why and when to use wild lettuce, and while that may be true of most herbal medicines, I find it particularly annoying in this case. There's so much more to this plant than most people know! The preppers (and stoners) seem to have embraced wild lettuce in a big way and there are scads (scads, I tell you!) of youtube videos about it. And if anyone tends to be - shall we be charitable and say "shortsighted"? - about medicinal plants, it's your average youtube prepper (and stoner). There, I said it.

"Legal opium", they call it. Or they go the other way and call it a "wild edible". It's neither - and yet it's both, if you insist on using it that way. But there are better (legal) ways to get high - wild lettuce is definitely not a 'party drug'. And there are definitely tastier wild edible leafy greens!

In the interests of my sanity (and yours) I think I'll just draw a line under any discussion of its "popular" uses and have a go at telling you about how and why and when I've found it useful over the years. So useful, in fact, that I've come to consider it an essential part of my medicine chest. Remember, this is my experience, yours will probably be different according to metabolism and, as we will see, intention.

Stalking the wild grapes

Oh lordy I love fall, it can't come fast enough for me.

Summer this year - with its extreme heat and humidity but lack of rain (with the exception of those damaging storms) - sucked, to put it bluntly. But it did, at least, produce a bountiful crop of wild grapes. And apples.

And the rest of this post is on my other blog. It's a long 'un, so if your attention span is short, feel free to skip it. I'll have other, more succinct posts coming up here in the near future.

Or not. I haven't yet decided if this blog will live or die.