Gardening by the Signs

Moon Waxing, Moon in Taurus

I planted much of our small terrace garden in the past week or so. With the moon in Taurus, a very fertile sign "number one for all root crops; second best for plants bearing above the ground" according to T.E. Black's Planting by the Signs chart (found in Foxfire, volume 2, I think). Well, the plants I put in were of the "bearing above the ground" variety, but I didn't want to wait until moon in Cancer rolled around. I transplanted cabbage and lettuce that I bought from an Amish lady, then planted a bunch of rows of spinach and finally a long row of Swiss Chard. I do love my greens! I also planted some herb seeds: dill, cilantro and rosemary.

The plan is to pay close attention this year to what I plant when, whether the moon is in the first and second quarter, full, third and fourth quarter, new moon, and what astrological signs are prominant on those days. I'm curious to see if this works. I expect it will and hope it will as well. I started a garden journal to help me keep track of it all.

What I'm wondering is what to plant underneath the black walnut tree, if anything. Right now, I've left the weeds in that section of the terrace garden, but I want to plant something there. I did a quick google search and found a webpage that discuss this, plants that will tolerate the jugalone of the black walnut tree: lima beans, snap beans, beets, carrots, corn, onions, melons, parsnips and squash. Hmmmmm. I might put a couple of melons there and see what happens, melons or beets, I think. The next really fertile days will be the 28th (which is also the full moon) with the moon in Scorpio. We'll shoot for then.

I've also been foraging, this being a wonderful spring for it. Since poor Fred is still recovering from his broken leg, I've been making him dandelion broth regularly. That is, I gather lots of dandy leaves and roots, yellow dock leaves, chickweed, plantain, clover leaves and wild onions and brew them up in a pot of water, simmering for 30 minutes or so and then straining out the greens, which go into the compost heap. Good dandelion broth and also some bone broth, is bound to help by providing lots of minerals and vitamins for his body to heal with. We see the doctor on Monday and hopefully he'll start having Fred put weight on the leg and getting his muscles back into shape. Lord knows, the poor guy is really TIRED of sitting around and reading. People need to move around--it is how our bodies know we are still alive :)

I've also been harvesting that marvelous garlic mustard and making pesto with it. That's what most foragers tend to recommend doing with garlic mustard as the plant is quite pungent, a little more than most folks will appreciate in a plate of greens. But it makes a superb pesto--here's the recipe I use, from Prodigal Gardens, one of my favorite foraging sites. I just noticed some horsetail growing on the other side of our little lake here, so I'll be gathering that as well for tea.

Spring has been absolutely lovely so far. Nice warm days, cool nights, lots of sunshine and now some rain to water those little plants in the ground. It's a blessing to be alive!
Onwards,
HM

Whoops!

A post or two ago I cited wintercress (barbarea vulgaris) as "creasy greens." Turns out that's not so, as I found by reading Wildman Steve Brill's entry on it in his Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and not so wild) Places. The form of wintercress grown in the South and called creasy greens as actually barbarea verna. I didn't see this bit earlier in reading his book. My apologies for any confusion!

The Purpose of Cats

If you hang with cats, you've seen this pix a kzillion times. Cats snooze up to 18 hours a day, whether they need it or not. Especially in a warm patch of sunlight. A cat can't walk through that patch without a fatal attack of the sneeps.

Ok, so cats sleep a lot. What does that have to do with the purpose of cats, you ask. It's easy. If you're sensitive to the catzone, you can easily see the little balloon over this cat's head, can't you. Right. And in that little balloon are lots and lots of zzzzzzzzzzs. You've got it! Cats produce zzzzzzzzs. Billions, trillions, quadrattaillions of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzss. They good-naturedly, selflessly produce scads of excess zzzzzzzzzzzzzssssssssss just so I can catch the extra wink or two when I need it. Or for that matter, when you or anyone else needs it.

For example, I woke up too early today. About 4 am. I got up as I always do since I hate "trying" to sleep. I went back to be later, and thanks to my cats' production of excess zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs, I was able to drop back off in Morpheus' arms and catch another 40 winks.

From now on, whenever you see cats snoozing, napping, lazing about with their eyes closed, smile at them and thank them. With maybe a dose of melatonin, a cat's excess zzzzzzzzs are all you need for a good night's sleep. Hell, my two cats even make enough to let the Gruff Lord snooze in naps daily!

Spring Greens and God's Green Tonic: Medicine for Body and Soul

A day or so ago I wandered around our hillside below our balcony and gathered many new and flourishing spring greens. There were three or four great growths of wintercress (barbaria vulgaris), also known in the south as creasy greens. I found numerous dandelions, not yet flowered (and thus not as bitter as they get later in the season), mats and mats of chickweed, wild chives and wild onions. There's also a whole slew of plants I haven't yet identified, so I don't know if they are edible or not. I gathered up about 3 of my plastic grocery bags worth and started grinning. I remember a post just like this one about a year ago. . . yup. Here it is. This hillside of ours is very fertile for foraging. I have to remember to ask that it NOT get weed-wacked. My neighbor is an industrious type and half the time I'm about to go harvest a ton of red clover flowers and BAM, he's out there weed-wacking them. Ah well. Have to do better this year.

Our elderly neighbor Fred broke his leg back in January and has been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes since. We brought him home last Saturday, where he gets around in his wheelchair, waiting for his leg to heal enough for him to walk again. He's one of those tough, wiry guys who is basically healthy as a horse but for his fragile bones and the rheumatoid arthritis. He's never taken pharmaceuticals, or rarely. It's funny when docs or other medics first talk to him. They always ask him what medications he's on and he always says "none." He does take nutritional supplements, but no drugs. Compare this to many elderly folks who take umpteen meds every day from killer statin drugs to blood pressure meds to this and that and then this one to combat the side effects of the others.... Anyway, Fred.

I put all the dandelion greens, some of the creasy greens, a bunch of the chickweed and a lot of wild onions and chives into a big pot of cold water with a couple of onions, some heads of garlic that were going soft and time to toss 'em, some cayenne pepper, a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar and set it to boil. Once it got a hard boil going, I turned it to simmer for an hour or so. The cider vinegar will help extract all the rich vitamins and minerals from the veggies into the broth. To finish it before straining, I added a tablespoon of some powdered garlic and onion and herbs that I'd made a while back from veggies and herbs I dried. Not bad, if I say so myself. This is a powerful spring tonic, this broth.

Vitamins and minerals in dandelions: beta carotene (more than is in carrots), calcium, iron, vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, D and biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc. And lots of all of those. Plus, in this broth, it's tasty and easily absorbed in the body. It'll do wonders for Fred. Wintercress is also highly nutritious and at this early stage in spring, quite tasty. Later it gets bitter as hell, and to some, it'll be too bitter even now, but not for me or Fred. We know that bitter is medicine for soul and body. You can see a good picture of wintercress here. Once you find this plant and ID it, you'll notice it every spring from now on. My eyes simply know now to look for it in early spring. The bright green lobes of the leaves will catch your peripheral vision easily.

I got three quarts of the broth--good for a start! Tonight I'll cook up the mess of creasy greens with some onion and bacon, and the chickweed, bless its soul, is going to be salad with some red onion and hard boiled eggs. This is fine eating, and free!

Do make some vitamin rich broth for your family. This is easy, simple to do, and your body will much appreciate its cleansing and healing properties.

Onwards,

HM

Why I Don't Coupon

I've been reading some articles lately about women who use grocery/drug store coupons and how much money they save when they shop. I admit, I kinda envy them. They put in the time and effort, and they get the reward of having to pay less money. Good for them.

However, I can't do it. Well, yes, I could do it, but I don't and won't. You see, I'm a cook-from-scratch kind of handmaiden. I always have been. It's only recently that I've even used many canned veggies. If I can afford it, I'd rather buy either fresh or frozen, and wait til the produce is in season. There are some things I use that I don't make from scratch, pasta for instance. I know you can make pasta at home, and it doesn't have to be fancy or require a pasta machine. There's ways of doing all of it by hand, because that's how it was always done in the past. And I will use of cream of whatever soup instead of making the soup from scratch. But mostly, I cook using basic foodstuffs that don't come with a long line of chemicals in the What the Hell IS This Stuff ingredient list.

For the past few years, I've been trying to de-chemicalize our household. Instead of multiple cleaning products, I've switched to using white vinegar for the most part. Occasional use of a pine-sol kind of cleaner is OK, too, but most cleansers are just too strong and chemically-smelling for me. They make me feel ill, so I don't like 'em. Vinegar suits me just fine and does a decent job of cleaning. I tolerate the vinegar smell far more than I can Super-Douper Floor Cleaner that costs six times as much.

I've been trying to de-chemicalize us because I think most of that stuff is why we have so many degenerative diseases. That and all the chemicals in our diet. Going to basics means turning your back on all the synthetic chemical products made by the Beast and sold at high cost.

In the past, I'd sit down with a grocery store circular and look at the coupons. I'd think about couponing and saving money that way, but the truth is, I don't buy fancy processed foods. Oh, a few years ago I might buy a package of frozen Salisbury steaks or something like that. But we'd gotten so used to eating real food that the last time I served it some time ago, my husband said "Oh that wonderful chemical taste!" jokingly, but not really. We could both actually taste the chemically flavor of it. And that was that for processed foods.

On the other hand, I'm not a purist about this. If I find a coupon for real butter I'll clip it and use it. Ditto for flour and other goods used for baking or cooking. As I said, I'll use store-bought pasta rather than make my own and there may be coupons for it. If there's a coupon for meat or fruit or some other REAL food, I'll go for it.

But that's the line in the sand: I don't want to eat chemical-laden not-really-food type food. And that's a huge market in this country where people have forgotten what real food is. High fructose corn syrup isn't food, it's a chemical. (I could be wrong here, I'm not exactly sure what the hell it is, except something I avoid.) Food is the stuff around the edges of the grocery store: veggies and fruit, bread, fish, meat, dairy. Almost everything in the middle aisles of a typical grocery store probably isn't good for you, and shouldn't even be called food. Most of it has been so processed and gobbed up with chemicals that I'd bet my body wouldn't recognize it as food.

We do use canned fruits, vegetables, and meats. And we'll can it or freeze it here at home as well. That's about as far as I want to get with processing. I don't like, respect or trust our food-processing industry. They lie. They make their products look good and even taste good through their use of chemicals. They take actual real ingredients and twist them and fiddle them and turn them into something that cannot provide nutritional value to a human being. But it'll taste good. How weird is that?

I'm not expressing myself very well here. I should probably erase this post because it seems I haven't really gotten to what I want to say. But I'll leave it. The point is, if it ain't real food, made by God, then don't eat it. It doesn't matter if you can get it for free through using coupons, what you've obtained is still crap. Free crap is still crap.

Onwards,
HM

Some Great Recipes for Everyday Stuff

You gotta love it! I've been reading around the blogs and found Ready Nutrition. It's a very interesting place to visit. While there, I found a blog entry for making your own condiments with recipes for Pickle Relish, Mayonaise, Mustard, Ketchup, etc. And there's also some recipes for making deodorant, shampoo, furniture polish and other everday items.

What I do when I find nifty and useful recipes for stuff like this, I copy it over to a document I started in the past year called "Survival Recipes." I suggest you might want to do that yourself as well. Then I print out my document and save a hard copy in the big notebook I have for recipes for all kinds of foods, herbal salves and tinctures, how to make Garlic Syrup, etc.

Sooner or later, the entire net might go down or be so tightly controlled by government that it is purely useless or just a simple time-waster. That's why I print and keep hard copy of certain items. Highly recommended!

It's a lovely day and I'm about to head out for a hike and see what all I can find wild. I'm still hungry for that chickweed salad! I'm beginning to feel that frisson of excitement that means spring is here, nettles will be up soon, garlic mustard will start appearing, and wild alliums are ready for harvest. Dandelions too, this time of year, are a wonderful treat and a real ass-kicker to break your body out of the winter blahs. Go out and look for some dandelions and get those greens before it flowers--they're not bitter until it flowers. It's a great spring tonic. Last year I gathered lots of wild onions and garlic and dandelion greens and brewed them up as a green spring tonic. Wonderful stuff.

Onwards,
HM

A Forager's Hunger

Man, am I ever hungry for a wild salad. Chickweed and dandelion and woods sorrel, with some wild onions and garlic. Maybe add to that some of my marinated dried tomatoes and garlic. I've got my eyes peeled for new, fresh, wild foods every time I go outside, but I'm afraid it is still too early. My foraging journal from last year says that March 5th was too early. Only some wild alliums were around. The next date is March 20th, and now we're getting somewhere, for that's when wintercress showed up.

There are a few mats of chickweed around, but they're not looking all that spunky. The plants look tired and crushed by winter's cold. Yes, they'll spring back and start growing, getting lush and ready for a hungry harvester, but not today. Probably not for a few weeks yet.

If you start foraging wild foods, I highly recommend keeping a foraging journal from year to year. Last year I kept one faithfully, right up until July 24th and then I quit. I imagine I was awfully busy with harvesting, drying, canning and whatnot, but I KNOW I kept foraging until November. I'll just have to do better and make journal notes all year. There's nothing in last year's journal about all the jerusalem artichokes, black walnuts, evening primrose roots, etc. Sigh.

Anyway, in your journal, keep track of the dates when you first notice wild plants. Write about where you found them, for there's a good chance they'll be there next year as well. Describe the scents, the colors, the greeness, the redness of the berries, etc. Describe all you can. Also mention what you do with the plants you harvest. Do you dry them, freeze them, can them? Take notes on how you process the food, how you cook it, the flavor etc. You'll certainly be glad you did. These notes--even scanty, discontinued ones like mine, are invaluable in coming years foraging. If you are teaching the skill, your journal can help your students learn about the plants and their habitations.

Right now, I'm wishing there was a nice, big, fat journal entry about a wonderful meadow where I found a huge patch of lucious chickweed and wild alliums, with the first tender dandelion leaves growing nearby. I'd be off like a rocket to that meadow! Daydreams, my dear, just daydreams.

I guess what I'll do is get some lambquarters out of the freezer for dinner. I'll have a taste of some wild greens at any rate. And I'll be watching for lady chickweed, you betcha!
HM