good medicine

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i wanted to share a little of the plant medicine i've acquired recently...it just keeps showing up! there's a pineapple guava tree in the front yard that i've walked by most days over the past year and i just learned that the beautiful little flowers are edible...and very tasty! this tree didn't produce any fruit last year, though from what i've read, temperatures over 90 can stifle its production. nice to enjoy some part of its tasty offerings!

this is soaproot. it grows all over the land i'm on and is native to California. i learned a bit about this plant years ago when i was teaching at Camp Arroyo. there was lots of soaproot there too. on the "food forest" hike, we would acquaint the kids with this medicinal plant that Native Americans used as a soap and to stun fish to make them easier to catch. what i didn't know and recently leaned is that it is useful for poison oak...to remove oils and sooth the rash. that's valuable info where i live!

a couple days ago Andres & i  stopped by a neighbor's house to buy some duck eggs--yum! as is often the case in this rural community, we ended up with more homespun love than we were looking for. for a pittance, we were generously gifted the hearty eggs, local honey & fresh picked cherries...all produced on that very farm! an added bonus was meeting two new friends who had dropped by. one of whom was full of plant wisdom...and at our meeting, a pocket full of st. johns wort flowers. she shared how to harvest the flowers in the early morning, squishing one and if it stains your skin red, you've got the right plant. pluck the flowers, add them to some sort of oil and place the jar in the sun for a few days to draw out the medicine. then take this foundation and get creative. i'm looking forward to creating a couple of tinctures!

ohhhh, this new discovery makes me soooo happy!! my dear friend and fellow One Community member, Lenora was visiting a week or so ago and first spotted common plantain outside our green house. this unassuming and prolific native grass that many consider a weed has highly valuable medicinal properties. Lenora shared that it was great for bee and wasp stings and she had once even used it on a black widow bite...successfully! she said it draws out the poisons. i confirmed her knowledge yesterday in a conversation with another herbal guru, who said it works on cuts as well. i've tried it on a poison oak rash, with mixed results, and on a mosquito bite, with success! so excited to know this plant friend...and to have it all around me!

thank you to all the seekers, explorers and subsequent imparters of knowledge...i'm loving all this learning!! oh, my lesson today was in seed saving. i'll be collecting seeds from our kale, cabbage, onions, broccoli, and lettuce in the next couple weeks. thank you, Curt!