Pine Pollen Ponderings (1) - gathering information

I'm kinda kicking myself here - this was supposed to be the year I get into working with pine pollen and I didn't even think about it until the last possible moment. Grrr! That's probably the trickiest part of working with nature, getting the timing right. Blink and the season for (fill-in-the-blank) is over; you have to wait another year.

Up until the last couple of days I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about pine pollen. I've never used it nor spoken to anyone who has, which leaves me only the literature to go on .. and since pine pollen is right up there in hype-ville with chaga, the "literature" consists mostly of the questionable ravings of body builders and other testosterone addicts and of course page after page of advertorials.

YOU CAN DO THIS!

I'm in a mood, folks.

It could even be said I'm in several moods at once. I was in a real snit, earlier (you can read this post over on my other blog if you want to know just how snitty I was).

There are still vestiges of that snit, but at least there's now a healthy helping of humility to balance it out.

If you were one of the dozen or so people to actually watch the video in the last post here, and if you've been a regular reader, you know that some of us are pretty concerned (putting it lightly) with the problems inherent in commercial herbalism. As far as I can tell, Big Herb has a lot to answer for. Not only is it responsible for the decimation of medicinal plants in the wild all over the planet, it's also guilty of gas-lighting the public about how, when and why to use medicinal plants in the first place.

Think wildcrafted herbs are the better way to go?

Think again.

More pics from the half-wild apothecary garden

This post is brought to you by this guy, who was kind enough to wait for me to run back into the house for my camera:

And then, of course, I started snapping pics of this and that ..

The half-wild apothecary garden - with pics

I was just telling someone about how so many of the Medicine Plants that grow in my garden do so without any input from me, the supposed gardener. In many if not most cases I just stand back and let them do their thing. Whether birds bring in the seeds or they've lain dormant in the soil just waiting for permission and the right conditions, who knows - but the ones that just come up of their own accord are some of my favourites.

The story of my cannabis "allergy"

This isn't really just a story about cannabis per se - which I'll probably refer to as pot or weed for the rest of this post, seeing as how I'm Canadian and to my mind "cannabis" just sounds pretentious - so much as it's a story of discovery. About what works, and what doesn't, for my particular allergy symptoms, and about how I figured that out. (hint, painfully).

For you see, although "they say" that an allergic response is a matter of histamine, that's actually kind of meaningless information when you're going through it. When one person gets runny eyes and nose, another will get dry sinuses and headaches. Where one will have a wet cough, another will get a swollen, dry throat. And if, as happens to me, antihistamines only make you feel sick and spun out and the symptoms don't abate under the influence of the drugs, the point is moot.

And no, I haven't been tested to see if this is, in fact, a true allergy. It might instead be - as many so called allergy symptoms are - a healthy response from my body to get rid of an irritant.

A very strong response that if I I ignored, it would be to my peril.

Spring tonic herbs - getting rid of the grunge

Spring has finally sorta kinda sprung here, touch wood; Paul (my husband, hibernating partner through this long awful winter and faithful keeper of the fire to the point I think he deserves a medal) still has the the wood stove going at night and again in the morning to take the chill off, but the days are far, far better than they were. We had blizzards and ice storms in April! No fair!!

Anyhoo -

There's a blog I pop into once in a while where they're currently discussing the idea of cleansing toxins while losing weight. Because we store toxins in fat cells, when we lose weight, that crud all goes back into circulation; that can be nasty, and it's a very good reason NOT to lose weight too quickly. As I've been offering my 2 cents worth in comments there it's twigging my memory of all the really great options that we have available at this time of year for getting rid of what I like to call the grunge ..