pesticides

Spring is in the Air
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Spring is in the Air

Hail Brave Hearts

It’s that time of year again, when the food supply  comes alive.  The garden and the springtime are almost synonyms.   Cast off your winter coat, indulge in the last of the winter larder, and start your preparation for this years treats.  It’s treats galore!

The infamous dandelion is back in full bloom, covering roadsides, hilltops, lawns and open spaces with bright yellow specs of early spring sunshine.  Pretty and nutritious, this hearty wild edible, is a plant that is either a friend or foe.  To those who think of this as a weed and find it a nuisance, it’s a lot of work to get rid of.  For those of us who indulge in it as a food supply, it’s free salad.  Perspective can be everything.   The larder can be full of sunshine dandelion goodness, if your recipe choice calls for it.  First in the spring, first on the table, the nutritional content is this plant is worth putting on the dietary list.

The beautiful bounty of your garden surpasses the fruit and vegetable plantings.  The edible flowers add a spark of colour and beauty to the garden and some help to deter pesky insects and slugs that  consume your vegetables as fast as you do.  Companion planting has mixed blessings, from deterring destructive insects to the beauty of salads, syrups, jams, baking  and other dietary delights, that pretty flowers enhance.  Choose your garden splendor, there’s time to grow a feast!

15 Different Types of Edible Flowers You Can Grow and Eat

A picture perfect salad, with a dash of rose petal,  tea from your marigolds, syrup of lilac, dainty cupcakes dressed up with violets,  it’s decadent, sweet smelling and creates a unique, inspiring garden and larder which enhances your dining experience all throughout the year.

This garden attracts useful pollinators, bees and butterflies to help the garden grow.  These beneficial insects  promote fruit and vegetable production, helping to give the yield that your hard work deserves.  The organic garden is preferred for this, since healthy insects need to pollinate without pesticides and your body is better able to absorb the nutrition of plants from organic gardens.

Weeds can be a treat.  Chickweed is edible and can be used as a garnish or in your salad.  Lambs quarters has a medicinal value as well.  Just be sure that all of your consumption has a food value and is not poisonous.

So here’s to spring and all of the goodness that it brings.  Good health and good eating to all.

Written by Dr. Louise E Hayes

May 23, 2025

 

 

 

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National Herbalist Day

Hail Brave Hearts

Enjoy the nutrition of the land and the many medical marvels that it reveals.  It’s a new day dawning for the Herbalist.  A day of worthy mention.  National Herbalist Day!  Wow!

The subject matter is superb.  Now that spring is here, the welcome backyard medicine cabinet is opening it’s doors.  New spring teas from fresh shoots, leaves and plants.  Lovely.  Fit for any larder, the beautiful abundance of natural goodness is in your yard.

The most obvious, killer weed, that notorious Dandelion.  Awesome!  The nutritional value of this plant is a keeper.

Plantain, St John’s Wort, Daisy and many more.   A special day for those of us, who seek natural remedies for those aches and pains.  I’ve been lucky with Nettle, Red Currant, Apple Leaf and Rose Hips, but these are just a few of the many natural wonders of the wild world.  Home made salves and soaps, fragrance and tea.  Natural healers to boost energy, to calm, to induce sleep, to improve circulation and help achy joints and achy pains.  Your garden is an Earthly delight.  Those pesky weeds, so hard to get rid of , might freshen your breath, improve your eyesight, add luster to your hair and make it shine.  The self indulgent gardener might even find a cure for what ails themselves.  There are many good gardening books which will help to plant an herbalist garden.

But are natural remedies important?  They are, if you want them to be.  Do they actually provide cures?  Yes, they do.

To quote Chris Dalziel at Jobillee Farm.  who has a  book Growing Abundance, the Garden You Harvest in a Week.

Monday is National Herbalist Day!  It’s a day to acknowledge the herbs that keep us well, help our gardens grow better, make our food taste better, and give us abundance.  Its also a day to recognize the herbal mentors in our life.

Who taught you about using herbs in the kitchen, the garden, and the apothecary?  Did you learn from a mother, a grand parent, a neighbor? Are you self-taught from books and the internet? Did you take a class? Or are you just beginning to learn about herbs as an adult?

Learn about Plantago major — Plantain

I love teaching children about herbs.  My 2 year old granddaughter knows to look for plantain (Plantago major) if she gets a bee sting or a mosquito bite.  “Plantain” comes from an old French word meaning “sole of the foot”.  It grows in compacted areas, where the footprint of humans or animals have compacted the soil.  Its a healing plant for the soil as much as it is a healing plant for us.

Often plantain is the first herb that people learn to use.  It can be an “a-ha” moment, when you hand them a leaf and tell them to put it on the “ouch”.  Relief is fast.

I’ve had the privilege of introducing plantain to tough motorcyclists, stung on the hand while riding, hikers, farmers, beekeepers, wee toddlers, and grumpy teens, mowing a lawn. Plantain is just one of the many gifts that God gives us to nourish and heal us.
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The Great Good

Good Day, you awesome human

Praises, to you and to yet another wonderful day.

The great planet has intrigued us yet again.  Fishes that look like elephants, white lions, new butterflies, imagination, creativity, brilliance.  Oh to be you, great mother Earth, with all of the gifts of creation.  The milleneums roll past with their constant changes, destruction and war, pestilence and strife, pollution and pesticides, garbage and waste, plunder and greed.  Still the Earth rolls on,with her magnificence and power.  Oh, great awesome one, with skills so immense, it’s unthinkable!  Power and might, life belongs to you.

Praises, fabulous creator, the life blood belongs to you.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthpicturegalleries/9753208/New-species-found-walking-catfish-Beelzebub-bat-and-two-legged-lizard.html

Hurling through space to seek your place in the universe.  Tiny by comparison, but with a mission that must be fulfilled.  Life forms on all of your surfaces.  The new, the unusual, something superb.   A new life, the unknown again, awakening our eyes to the new adventure.  So, great human, you’ve been everywhere, done it all, there’s nothing new now.  The oceans explored, space travel accomplished, the pinnacles of mountains reached.  Where to now, for the mind and body of man?  Where now, for the spirit to call us?  All feats accomplished, all stones have been turned.  All quests fulfilled.  The power of the human, so mighty and intelligent.  Technology, engineering, development and creativity.  A unique and special mind, controlling the planet, bending and twisting, changing and developing.  A constant pursuit of knowledge that intrigue and curiosity propels.  What is that?  How does it work?  How do we make that brilliant, special interest our own creation.  How to control the planet and make it’s mysteries our own.

The fabulous planet spins it’s own wonderful web of mystery and intrigue.  Do we know it all?  Have we found and conquered it all?  Rest in peace oh great creator, you are the most blessed.  Times change, the weather hurls it impact at us,  driving blizzards, scorching sun.  The heat is warming the surface and the snow melts from our yards.  Global warming encroaches and trees start to bud.  The awe of creation is still your magic.  Creatures rise and creatures fall. The age of the dinosaur and the age of man.  The unknown belongs to you.  Where will you take us, in the magic ride? New environments?  New creatures to discover?  New landscapes to present themselves and to challenge our bodies and our minds.  As the surface is blasted with war torn madness and the oceans fill with plastics and waste, we scramble to stop the doom of the planet.  Whose doom is it anyway?

The sun rises and sets in regular motion, the moon follows it’s path across the sky, the waves pound and crash as the tides roll in and out.  Regular, like clockwork the natural process continues.  We take it for granted, it’s always been there.   Oh, and praises, human for making a garbage can, somewhere to put the constant refuse.  Garbage dumps and pile high, rotting stench,  another kind of pollution.  So much destruction for the great mother to bear.  All of her children, her marvelous creation, secumbing to the blast of wanton wastefulness and recklessness.

So this is us, the human, so awesome and brilliant.  Will you save us great planet?  Or do you other designs.

Written by Dr. Louise Hayes

March 12, 2016