Merry Solstice and Daylilies

It’s Solstice time again in the summer, the longest day of the year…. this year with a full moon to boot. Hope you get a chance to go outside and frolic in the sunlight. I did, I went out in my garden and gathered Daylily flowers.

Day-lilies have been used as medicine and food for thousands of years in Asian cultures. They are eaten fresh in a variety of ways and also dried to be used later to thicken soups. The dried flowers are called Golden Needles.They’re used in Chinese medicine for circulatory issues, as a diuretic (damp heat) and are being researched for anti-cancer properties.¹ Their energy is cooling and somewhat astringent.

There’s a bit of controversy over whether or not they are edible; most likely because of common names, as some people have called them Tiger Lilies. Day-lilies are in the Xanthorrhoeaceae family, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae, whereas Tiger Lilies are also a common name for a plant in the Liliaceae family, which is toxic. For a more in-depth article about the differences read this link. That said, when trying any plant you have never eaten before, first make sure you are absolutely sure which plant you have and then only try a small amount the first time, as there are a small percentage of people who will be sensitive to any given plant.

I’ve tried the greens before and found them rather bland, so I’m hoping the flowers are a little more exciting. I’m pickling some of the not yet opened opened buds.

The other thing I’m doing is making a flower essence….. if you know me, you know I’ll make a flower essence out of almost any edible flower and lots of other things as well. The Daylily spoke to me about sex and creativity, not surprisingly, it’s such a showy flower. Even before I looked up the traditional uses, I had the impression of circulation in the first and third chakras, physically and energetically this plant moves one. It reminded me that we have a limited time to create in our lives, so time is of the essence! Energetically, the male creative forces are supportive to the female forces, or the yang is supportive of the yin. This flower essence invigorates and gets one moving while also nourishing the life force.

 

1. naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/39856/PDF

 

*This article is meant for educational purposes and not to diagnose or treat any illness or disease. Consult a local plant expert for plant identification.

 

Imbolc or the Beginnings of Spring

Brigid’s cross. Yes, I made this.

Imbolc marks the first stirrings of Spring in the Northern hemisphere, either February 1st or 2nd, depending on your source for dates. Some years, Winter hangs on and lingers; but this year, at least on the West coast, Spring has Sprung!

Chives peeking up in my garden.

Imbolc is associated with the Goddess Brigid in Ireland, and the violet is one  of Her flowers.

Sure enough they are just getting ready to bloom.

Brigid is considered the Goddess of Water and Fire. I’ve been exploring the Red Alder, Alnus Rubra, and gathering bark and catkins as the tree is flowering at this time in late winter/ early spring. It’s not traditionally associated with Brigid or Imbolc, but I still consider it fitting as a tree of Water and Fire. Alder has an affinity for wet climates and watery places. It’s a gateway plant, meaning it’s one of the first trees to come back where humans or fires have disrupted the land. Alder fixes nitrogen into the soil and remediates the ph. As a relatively short lived tree, it grooms the soil for longer lasting trees to take over and thrive again.¹ The fire part comes in the bark. When the bark is scratched or peeled it turns red. Considering the Doctrine of Signatures, we would guess that Alder is useful to the blood, which in fact it is. It aids the lymphatic system and is anti-microbial. For an amazing in-depth monograph on Alder, read this by Kiva Rose.² Dried alder bark helps with digestive issues. The tincture turns a lovely red just like the dried bark.

Alder bark tincture as it looked just before I got lost in the viewfinder of the camera and kicked it over. Hmph.

What signs of Spring can you find in your own yard or neighborhood? What are your experiences with alder?

Kitty checking out the Spring garden. My artichokes came back in Nov. and so did most of the ones around town and they’ve made it through the little bit of freezing weather we had the end of Dec.

¹http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1995-55-4-a-nitrogen-fixation-the-story-of-the-frankia-symbiosis.pdf

²http://bearmedicineherbals.com/rivermedicine.html

All information here is for educational purposes and not intended treat any medical conditions. If you have any questions please consult your doctor.

Winter Dye Experiments

While there are many things that can be done with herbs in winter, I look forward to the lull in foraging to do arts and crafts. One area I’m exploring is natural dyes. While I can’t afford at this point to buy all locally produced organic textiles, I can try to get familiar with the dye process, and hope one day to produce more of my own clothing. Upcycling is fun, but I still have to wonder about how the fabrics and dyes impact the environment where they are produced; in fact, I know much of the clothing we wear is toxic and environmentally unfriendly and in many cases produced by slave labor. You can read more about that if you’re interested, here.

Now the fun part; home fabric dyeing. I decided to use Hibiscus as an experiment to see how it would dye while making some Hibiscus tea, so these linen/cotton bits were dyed with the second brewing; there was so much life left in the tea, and it was so pretty I couldn’t resist. They may have come out darker if I had used the first brewing. Also, I decided to see how the tea would brew on its own and didn’t mordant the fabric before dying.

Another thing I forgot to do was to check the ph level of the solution, so the next time I might do that and pre-mordant and see if that increases the color absorption. For most dyes, you want a neutral ph of about 7. “Mordant” is a French word that means “biting”. A mordant helps bind the pigments to the fabric. I’m pretty happy with samples from the vinegar bath and the salt bath. The straight solution came out a bit lighter than it looks here, but still useable, whereas the one that had washing soda added didn’t take much color at all! Although Hibiscus is full of vitamin C, which I would have guessed to be somewhat acidic, the acidic addition is the one that came out darker, so I will have to find the ph sticks for my next try.

My next try will be a local herb, Red Alder. Let me know if you’d like to see another dye post for the results!

Winter Foraging and Nourishment

Now, we are in the midst of winter…. don’t tell my garden, though, in spite of several days of freezing weather, the plants are starting to grow!…. dead nettle and kale and the neighbor’s flowering quince are starting to bloom… last year the seasons started early and it looks like this year will be even earlier…. But beyond that, it is supposed to be Winter …

“swiss chard and malva neglecta sprouting”

In Chinese medicine winter is the time of nourishing and protecting the kidneys; the taste for the kidneys is salty. Good quality salt is one way to help direct the nutrition you take in to nourishing the kidneys throughout the season. 

Although salt has been vilified in recent years, it’s an important component in good health, everyone needs some and some people actually need more than others. Your doctor can do a blood test to see where your potassium – salt balance is and advise accordingly; a few conditions that may benefit from more salt are conditions such as adrenal fatigue (kidneys) and cystic fibrosis. Most people who are getting too much salt, are getting it through processed and prepared foods, where salt is heavily added for taste and preservation. Not only is it a lot of salt, but it’s processed salt, or as I call it “processed salt food product”. This “salt” has been heated to crystallize, iodine added then bleached to make it white again, and often had dextrose (hello, diabetics) or anti-caking agents added in.¹  These added ingredients can be included up to 2%. The FDA considers them non-toxic, so it’s up to you how important that is to you, I prefer to avoid additives. Be aware that many sea-salts are also fairly processed. I use celtic sea salt that’s minimally processed, it’s kind of chunky and damp, so I dry it in the dehydrator (an oven on the lowest setting for a few hours would also work) and then grind it up in the blender or coffee grinder. If you’re adventurous you can add some herbs into the mix for a custom flavored finishing salt. Cutting the salt with up to 50% herbs or spices will also cut the amount of sodium, if you need eat less salt; without losing flavor.

If you’re adventurous and live near a coastline with a clean stretch, you can make your own salt! As many coastal communities put their waste water outflows at public beaches or other pollution sources such as offshore drilling may contaminate the quality of the water, it’s important to do a little research on the quality of your local beaches. I live on Puget Sound and it seems the water doesn’t get clean around my region until up around Camano Island. I’m judging this by the website for Washington State Dept. of Health Shellfish Safety Information, which shows areas closed for pollution…. looking at it today is a bit discouraging. This information changes often, as, well, water moves and weather changes, so check your local area just before you hope to gather some water. I would advise doing the same before foraging for seaweed or other sea life.

So, if it’s a good day, pollution-wise, and you want to give it a try, I’ll show how I’ve harvested salt from the wild.

First gather some sea water in a container. I would avoid busy beaches when there are lots of people and maybe dogs in the water for obvious reasons.

Next I strained the water to remove any extra materials that might have come home with the water.

After that, I simmered the seawater to evaporate the majority of the water, leaving just a little water to evaporate from a pan that I set aside in the kitchen for a few days.

When that had evaporated, I used a spatula to scrape up the salt residue that was left.

I transferred it to a spice bottle, and have my very own wild foraged salt! I only gathered a little bottle of water so I ended up with only a little bit of salt. Salt is only 3.5% ² of the composition of seawater, so it takes quite a bit of seawater to  get a quantity of salt from it.

I really enjoyed going through the process of making it myself. I find I appreciate things more when I’ve made an effort to make it myself and see the process…. and I always find it rewarding to reconnect to the natural world where everything we use ultimately comes from. I don’t think I’ll be making all my own salt anytime soon, so making my own salt made me aware that I’d like to know about the companies that produce salt. In the spirit of the locavore movement there is a small artisanal salt producer locally, the San Juan Island Sea Salt company.

¹http://www.saltinstitute.org/news-articles/iodized-salt/

²http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html

*Nothing in this post is meant to be construed as medical advice or to be used for treatment. This article is intended to solely educational. If you have concerns or questions please visit your doctor for advise.

Crones of Winter

Winter is upon us. We’ve passed the Solstice; the longest night of the season, but we still have the bulk of winter ahead of us. Winter is a time to go within and reflect, to rest and nourish the body and soul.

I wrote these thoughts about the Crone a couple of years ago:

As we enter Winter, I’m enjoying researching some of the traditional crones of Winter. Winter in colder climates is seen as the dying part of the year; the void from which the Spring will flow. It was associated with the crone phase of a woman’s life and there were some interesting archetypes and myths. One of these is Baba Yaga, the old woman of Eastern Europe who lived in the woods, outside of regular village life. These old hags lived out in the woods, and were fearsome as a winter’s storm. They wielded thunder and ice and generally had bones lying  around their abodes. Baba Yaga lived in a hut on chicken legs. This is thought to refer to the food huts that country folk would construct on one or several stumps that would keep the food high enough to be out of the path of most animals. The fact that they are chicken legs, a domesticated animal shows that she was part civilized, part wild, a hedge-witch or a person who could straddle both worlds. She rode around in a pestle and abducted small children, presumably to eat. She is probably where some of our popular fairy tales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, originate from. She had a lot of knowledge but was likely to extract a high price for it, or set difficult tasks, or some say put one through an initiation. Old women have no time to harbor your illusions, aren’t afraid to speak their minds and can be quite cranky. They also understand there is no teacher like experience.

The western Europeans had Caillech Bheur, the big blue giantess who reminds me an awful lot of Kali. She ran around with a tree stump as a club, and when she struck the ground, it caused the winter storms and thunder. In fact, there are other Celtic female archetypes who remind me of Kali, such as Sheela na-Gig, another crone. I’ve traced the Sheela na-Gig image back as far as Gobekli Tepe, 12,000 years ago in Turkey.

As we moved forward in time, we started taming the wildness of woman in her wisdom, and requiring her to be more polished and youthful, so we end up with the Snow Queen, who nonetheless is cold and inaccessible; sharing her wisdom with only those she deems worthy or who have fulfilled her tasks.

Winter tests our mettle, can be unpredictable and harsh, showing no mercy to the unprepared. It’s also a time to go within and reflect, to sweep away all that doesn’t serve us, transmute the leftover energies of the previous year, so that energy becomes the fertilizer of the growth that will burst forth with the new Spring.

For the adventurous and wise who would like to journey with the Crone this Winter, get out your cauldron, er, pots and pans and make your own bone broth! Bone broth is nourishing, providing minerals that our body needs to build itself up. Adding a dash of vinegar helps to extract the minerals from the bones. Simmer your bones, vinegar and whatever herbs you would like for a few hours for maximum nutrition. I like to add astragalus, which supports the wei qi of the lungs, where we directly interact with the world while breathing, and perhaps encountering viruses and such. I also like to simmer mushrooms in the broth as most mushrooms have immune supporting constituents. You can drink this broth as is after straining, or use as a base for a soup to add even more nutrients to the mix.

Aronia Berry Wine

It’s berry season and I’m trying a new to me berry this year; Aronia.

The Aronia is native to the Americas, also known as Chokeberry, due to it’s astringency and slightly bitter taste.

It’s not a great berry to pick and eat, but great in wines, jams and syrups. Like most berries, it’s high in antioxidants and bioflavonoids which improve vascular health.

I found some growing locally and decided to try out making a wine; but I’ll have to let you know how it turns out in about a year. Beer is ready in about a week, but to get the fully developed flavor of a wine means waiting at least a year to see how it turns out! Totally different yeasts. And patience level…..

[

• Servings: 1
• Print

Ingredients

• 3 lbs. Aronia berries
• 1/2 lb. raisins
• 2 lbs. sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. yeast nutrient
• 1 tsp. pectic enzyme
• wine yeast
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 tsp. loose black tea for tannins
• Campden tablet (Optional)
• water to one gallon

Directions

Bring one quart of water to a boil and pour over raisins and sugar in primary fermenter/ food grade bucket, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Mash berries with your favorite mashing device. Add to the bucket. Add loose tea and mix. If desired add Campden tablet. Let sit for 24 hours. Add pectic enzyme and yeast energizer. In a cup, pour orange juice (room temperature) and sprinkle yeast over it. Let it sit until the yeast is bubbly and softened and then add to the bucket. Stir with a sterilized spoon (I run the hottest water from the tap over it) once a day for 3-4 days. Strain marc (your wine ) into a carboy and attach airlock. Let ferment for about a week. Rack the wine by siphoning it into a clean carboy. Let ferment again for 3 months. Rack the wine again. Let ferment for another 3 months, and finally bottle the wine. It doesn’t hurt to test your wine to be sure it’s done fermenting. I had a mead pop corks last year and the floor got to drink it…. sad….. The Aronia wine is a beautiful dark blue purple color.

*To update this post, I opened a bottle recently and it turned out well! I’m going to make some more this year.

Pretty Bit of the Day 8-7-15

My Pretty Bit of the Day photos are a visual diary of pretty things I find interesting.

Today’s post is the first flowering of my artichoke plant.

Squeeee! I love artichokes; pretty and tasty and useful.

Artichokes contain antioxidant flavonoids such as Quercetin and Rutin, which are known to promote vascular and heart health. Additionally, the Luteolin, cynarin and silymarin in artichokes may help with regeneration of liver tissue, and may lower risks for some cancers.*

*This post is for educational purposes only and not intended to treat any illness or disease. Please consult an MD if you have questions about this information.

Welcome to the new version of my blog

This is the new home of my blog which will be focusing more on herbalism and art than my old blog.

I wanted to make something  a little more cohesive.

Some of the posts from my old blog will migrate over, such as some recipes and herb posts, but mostly it will be new material focusing on wellness, herbal knowledge, and recipes.

To start things out, I’m finally posting a recipe several people have requested.

Blueberry Lavender Popsicles

I can’t do dairy, so these are made with coconut milk with a little vanilla….. I suppose milk would work the same way. Next I add preserved blueberries. I use this recipe for preserved blueberries with lavender that I found on Pinterest. I put a few spoonfuls of the berries into the coconut milk poured into the popsicle forms along with a little of the syrup. You can add more sweetener if you wish. I used bpa-free popsicle forms, but I’ve read that they still have endocrine disruptors, so use whatever forms you feel most comfortable with. I like these cause they look like rocket ships, heh.

Then freeze.

You may need to run a little water over the forms when you want to eat them to get them to slide out.

Fresh or frozen blueberries should work as well, then you will likely want to add a little more sweetener. You can steep a little lavender in the coconut milk in that case and then strain out.

Blueberry Lavender Popsicles

• Servings: 6
• Time: 10 mins plus freezing
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 cup preserved blueberries and syrup
• 1/4 cup sweetener of choice
• additional sweetener if desired

Directions:

In a medium size bowl mix together the coconut milk and sweetener. Pour equally into popsicle forms. Spoon Blueberries and syrup into form. Insert tops into popsicle forms and freeze for a couple hours.

Enjoy, yum!