Go ahead, get a little wild

The mass of green on the left there
is red clover, just about to come into bloom.
 Mow around it!

It's mostly because we're just too tender-hearted. We've just never been able to mow down something we know to be medicinal, or edible, or will feed the wild bees or the humming birds. It just seems bad form to reject what nature offers up so generously.

So for the first few years we lived here, we'd notice some particularly weedy patch in the lawn, and go around it with the mower. Islands formed, miniature eco-systems. I got the chance to learn about plant succession, about "guilds", and about all the ways these new friends of mine could balance my hormones, relieve my fibro-like pain and how some of them were just downright fun - popping the seed capsules of what is locally known as 'himalayan honeysuckle' is irresistible.

Lambsquarters aka wild spinach. Reliable,
delicious, and carefree. 

Eating wild foods from your own back yard - in real life.

Wild foods, or 'weeds' as some call them, you gotta love them. They're free, and they're generally way more nutritious than most garden vegetables. You can wander the countryside to forage for them, you can cozy up to your local organic farmer and offer to weed his garden to get them, or you can just stop mowing your lawn and see what comes up. I do all three, have done for a while now. Here's some of what I've learned.

Violets: breast health, first aid and they taste good, so cherish them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -

Anyone who considers violets an undesirable weed should be the first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes.

Weed? Pfffft. 

Violets are both food and medicine; they're a gift, a blessing, and sometimes a prophecy.

Garbling the comfrey roots & a couple of nifty examples of the Doctrine of Signatures

There's a lot to squeeze into this post!

Early spring and late fall are the times we go after root medicine. Right about now, still early spring where I live, while the leaves of herbaceous perennial plants like dandelion and comfrey are still small their roots are still fat and full of stored goodness.

This is one of my many comfrey plants:

This is what happens when you drop ONE comfrey leaf on your lawn.

Learning to forage - plant ID

In the background of this blog is a small but enthusiastic gang of readers who write to me quite regularly - you know who you are - and I'd just like to say how darn proud of you all I am.

I hadn't dared say it out loud, but this is exactly what I was hoping would spring up here, a bunch of newly minted enthusiasts who dare to look a weed in the eye and say 'who ARE you?' and 'what purpose do you serve?'.

Couple of links and pics

Not yet time for me to roll up my sleeves and get back to it (what with there still being glaciers out there and all).

I did start some seeds in the window sill .. click 'read more' for seedling porn

Wintergreen foraging through the snow

It was the day before February.

Cabin fever setting in for real now. Not that it's been a harsh winter, but .. well, we still get crazy. So what to do when there's a thaw for a day? Why go to the beach of course!

"Cote Jaune", Calumet Island, on a narrow channel of the mighty Ottawa river. Across the way is Mansfield, Quebec.