The tribe

I'm supposed to be making strawberry jelly right now, from the berries we picked yesterday from our favourite "I don't spray" strawberry farmer's fields. I simmered them down - with some of last year's (frozen) apple peels and cores so I don't have to use commercial pectin - last night; the gorgeous red juices have dripped into a bowl and are waiting for me to get off my butt.

I also have to make a big batch of chilli, get that huge tray of chicken thighs in the fridge marinating for the chicken marbella .. oh, and I kinda have to make some extra bread to freeze, too. There's a heat wave coming our way in a few days; a week long, highs in the 100's, nobody-wants-to-cook-in-that-kind-of-weather heat wave. I have to get ready, or at least as ready as I can, with at least some pre-cooked meals. It's not like we have restaurants up here!

But what am I doing instead of all that? I'm contemplating making yet more coffee and thinking about tribes. Actually, I'm thinking about the tribe I know is out there but I'm unlikely to meet - my tribe. Those who, like me, don't see a mass of green when they see a forest or a meadow, they see individuals, they see 'the standing people', as the First Nations peoples call them.

Tincture of Rice Krispies - (Pine Pollen 2)

It's a drag being trapped in the house in the winter time, but trapped in the house in summer is painful. It's so green and lush out there but we can only look and sigh ..

Why are we trapped in the house?

BUGS!!

In some ways, this being a peak year for insects is a good thing. Those goddamn blackflies and horseflies and deerflies and mosquitoes don't just get by on a steady diet of blood, they're also pollinators. (Well some of them are, I don't know if they all are). And they're food for birds and other critters. Circle of life, and all that. I certainly don't begrudge the frogs and swallows their due.

But this year, by some cruel (to us and the other mammals) twist of fate, these bugs that usually come in stages - first one evil blood sucking, itchy welt producing menace and then the next - are overlapping, God help us.

Right this minute, they all lurk outside our door.

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.