the songs of usnea

Trigger alert - this post is about as "woo-woo" as it gets. If this sort of thing isn't your cup of tea .. then really, nothing on this blog will be helpful to you. For you see, this is what the Medicine Plants are all about for me, and stories like this are the background to everything I write.

Once upon a time, it was winter, a sparkling day. We were on a ramble. We'd just crossed the little wooden bridge over the Picanoc river, wondering how far we'd be able to get up the Polish Hills road. As it turned out, we didn't get far at all, but the place we stopped to turn the car around was as nice a place as any to get out and stretch our legs, and so we did.

Paul was taking pictures (I guess, I don't really remember) while I looked up at the big white pines and breathed in the snowy air and let my feet pull me whichever way they wanted, which is always a good way to find something interesting.

A 2fer post - Oats galore and garbling the usnea

Just over a week ago we went for one of those evening drives, when the light is all golden on the fields and shadows play in the forests. Down our favourite back road on Calumet Island we came across a field of oats, still green, but cut down that day. The smell was indescribably beautiful, especially combined with all the wildflowers of the ditches and the dew just coming on.

As there is no gate, I ventured into the field and discovered, to my delight, that the all around the edges of the field, where weeds meet crop, the farmer had left oats standing. Score! I love oatstraw infusions, so I gathered an armload and brought them home. I had no knife - silly me - but they come up by the roots very easily.