Yarrow is a pretty cool plant! A couple of loose tidbits: the dried stalks are the traditional material for casting the I Ching. And the essential oil is bright blue!
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Yarrow is a pretty cool plant! A couple of loose tidbits: the dried stalks are the traditional material for casting the I Ching. And the essential oil is bright blue!
It seems like most of the edible nightshades are thus. Only the one part is edible, like fruit of tomato or tuber of potato. The rest of the plant is poison. The beauty of it for the grower is that this makes them resistant to many plant pests and animals.
Thought maybe you'd written more and went and looked up omnibus...
Okay, timeline cleanse. 🖤 Everyone who sees this post, quote post 5 things that make you happy: 1. Things that glow in the dark (like fireflies, mushrooms, ocean lights & quartz light!) 2. Weird plants (aroids, night-blooming flowers, bulbs, parasites etc.) 3. Cats 4. Seafood 5. Dumpster Diving!
Between firewood work in the morning and watering the garden in the afternoon, today and the next several warm days my time will be literally devoted to "chopping wood and carrying water" :) Including shower water. Motivates one to conserve when one totes it outside in a bucket!
All good! Life on the land without drama....busy serenity...
All it took was a cold morning and suddenly the cat, who has been unsociable for months, is happily sleeping on my lap! Fall is here!
That stone looks exactly like one I picked up when I lived out in California! I have three favorite ritual stones from there actually...one of the others is a green serpentine, and another something quite red.
I put them in the blender and grind to powder, and then add the powder to the simmering sauce to thicken it! No stirring a pot for hours and hours getting it to thicken by boiling! Essentially replacing a lot of propane or electricity with solar energy. Then once it boils, I can it.
I dry tomatoes regularly as a part of making pasta sauce. Usually I slice them, put them on screens and put them in the attic, with a fan on them. Snap dry in three or four days. A vehicle parked in the sun works good too. Then I store them in sealed bags. When it's time to make sauce...
wow cantaloupe in Montana! That's quite a feat! I wonder if they start them in a greenhouse or something?
I remember this stuff! It was sort of everywhere in Bangladesh..
Seems like there's a good chance that the strong smell of the herbs might keep problem insects away from the veggies!
That's a cabbage worm adult. They will lay eggs on any and all brassicas and hatch into green worms...
and I'm anxious now to try it on the likes of Hedychium and other z.8 plants...
One trick I'm learning with borderline plants is to cover them heavily with plastic bags of leaves or other DRY mulch over winter. The trick is to keep the soil from freezing and also keep it from getting too wet. This has worked with cannas and Salvia guaranitica for me at zone 6B/7A..
Well they do have the whole rest of four acres to eat on! Eventually we will fence the garden completely, there has been a rabbit or two as well, but so far not much damage done. The animals in suburbia were actually worse...
I believe they call them swedes in Britain? Like a turnip only bigger and yellow.
I am in Illinois USA, home of both fireflies and tornadoes...
This reminds me just a little of the saying, quoted as from a Native American frustrated with politics: "Don't you know that the left wing and the right wing are on the same bird?"
But to replant such trees, and rebuild such a culture, if it is possible at all, will also likely be a project of centuries. Nevertheless, I water my two baby chestnut trees regularly!
the indigenous people of northern California, some of whom still gather and make acorn based foods. For months on end, me, my chickens, and my sheep did the same. But this was from ancient, centuries-old trees which covered the ground with their crop most years.
all across the Northern Hemisphere in ancient times, and were largely supplanted by grain agriculture and pastoralism since these practices better serve the interests of empire. I was privileged to live for ten years in close awareness of some of the last of these peoples.....
The oak, along with the chestnut, has been a staff of life and staple food for large numbers of people through history and prehistory. It exemplifies the possibility of sustainable human diet and life, based on long-lived, perennial forests. These societies existed....
I once watched someone set his pants on fire by cradling a glass bottle of water in his lap, sitting cross-legged on the ground. It was water in a Mateus wine bottle, with an odd almost spherical shape. We didn't believe it was real, so we set the bottle in some dry leaves, and it happened again!
Shiso, Perilla...One of the plants considered an "invasive exotic" in southern Illinois....
Cool! Got to learn a new word (anamnesis)!
wow!
Gardening, or horticulture, is a sort of in-between state, giving very high food yields but on a small scale and usually more perishable. It regularly astounds me how little land it takes to give me a staple diet of potatoes and sweet potatoes.
Agriculture is by contrast focused on the short term, annual yields. In climates where nuts flourish, it's arguable that agriculture is more about being useful to empire building and capitalism than to actual food productivity. That's for grain agriculture...
There are ecosystems still which produce nuts in such abundance that it's easy to make a subsistence from them from no more land area than would produce a comparable yield from grain, like where I used to live in northern California with the acorns. But that was from mature trees centuries old.
Sounds like you need a solar cooker! I have two and they are in use every sunny day, and are ideal for long slow simmering like a soup! On a very bright day they will hit 300F and bake bread!
I have gone round and round multiple times with sundry people on this issue. My one line response is usually something around the idea that we all need to take a good long look in the mirror before condemning some plant as an "invasive exotic".
Before I became a pagan, I thought that song was about some horrible medieval torture!
basically everything you plant in the early spring and they will tolerate the first fall frosts and keep going. The exception would be if you mean 8B in a cool summer zone like Pacific Northwest, in which case plant them all whenever you like...
That warm a zone might be a bit early for proper fall planting, though you might get away with second plantings of summer stuff like green beans or summer squash. By mid-August you can think about in earnest, with seeding of cole crops, rutabagas and turnips, radishes, lettuce, etc....
As a grower of figs, I've never seen this as anything but a pest, or a chicken munchie at best. It is fireflies and butterflies that inspire me...
My partner and I endured ten years of ever worsening fires in northern California before finally giving in and becoming climate refugees. So far, rainy Illinois has proven welcoming. The last straw was being under evacuation advisory for 60 days, and watching it burn on the hills every night.
Honey bees get my due respect. I used to keep them, but gradually got more allergic to their stings over time. Eventually my whole hand swelled up, and I quit with them and gave away all my beekeeping stuff.
It seems from what I read that various things can show up as orbs....fairies and ghosts for instance, and that abductions can be astral/spiritual or physical, leaving physical traces.
We spent one winter in Southern Oregon, in various places between Ashland and Cave Junction. In that one winter, I saw more Confederate flags than I did in twenty years living in Georgia!
and spew. Unbeknownst of it all, I was working in the back yard with firewood, and came around the corner of the house, chain saw in hand. Those two beat a very hasty retreat, and we suspected we were put on some kind of list, because they never came back, even when they worked the area again!
My funny story about this....when we lived in town, every year Mormons or SDA's or whoever would make the rounds door to door...two by two and smartly dressed. One time my partner was giving them a piece of her mind for having bypassed a plain "no soliciting" sign to knock on the front door.....
White potatoes out, rutabagas in! Also cardinal flower in bloom, the most intense imaginable red!
It reminds me of a quote from years ago, about the Vietnam War, I believe. "We had to destroy the village in order to save it".
maybe ashwagandha?
I find the key to effortless meal prep is to learn contentment with eating the same thing, or minor variations on the same thing, day after day. This is encouraged by my homesteading lifestyle, where I'm basing my diet around what grows easily.
Oh yeah, Illinois. I don't even remember the last time there was a day with a high not over 90. Probably last month some time. Like early last month.
yeah I'm happiest at 80 plus. My partner, on the other hand, is happiest at 75 and below....
There are likely similar traditions in many other parts of the world. Will-o-the-wisps and jack-o-lanterns in Britain come first to mind, and it's easy to come up into the modern world with accounts of ghost lights, orbs, and UFO's.
Read up on it (resources from New Zealand are ideal where it's completely legal) and learn how to measure the temperature as it's distilling so you separate and throw out the toxic methanol that comes off first.
It was originally sold as lab glassware, meant to be used over a bunsen burner, but it works just fine on a gas or propane stove! I had to rig a stand for the condenser part but that was pretty simple. Once through with rough wine will make a clear liquor strong enough to burn....
You could get you a little stovetop still, and make your own moonshine for tinctures!
I've dug potatoes almost every year of my life since I was 16. Every time it seems like a miracle. You plant one small potato, or a cut piece of a potato, and a few months later dig up a bunch. A very small patch produces staple food for months.
The ground squirrels were the second worst pest (#1 was gophers) when we lived in California. They would run off with all kinds of fruit, especially plums and tomatoes. I think it was the moisture in them with the dry summers. They would also pilfer chicken and dog food, and chew holes in hoses.
yeah they were rainbow sparkles like that. Like someone had sprinkled glitter in there! And in ordinary daylight.
wow, learned something new :)! It reminds me of the time finding sparkly crystals in my humanure buckets when I opened them up for the compost, after some months' storage. Took me a long time of research to find they are probably uric acid. I was living in dry California at the time.
wow you're intense! Even I would have been tempted to compost these! But having a garden with abundant carrots has made my standards jaded I suppose! Or finding them by the bagful in some dumpster. But bought stuff is another matter. I will definitely cut mold off of cheese and eat the rest!
Last year I discovered purple sweet potatoes! They DO keep the color when cooked, are yummy, and they seem to grow more vigorously than other kinds!
If I'm ID'ing an unfamiliar one I use mushroomexpert.com, and the one app Shroomify is good as a starter, but I always include a real book, preferably one published before 2000, if I'm thinking of eating it. Some of the internet information out there these days could kill...
It is a subtle and fascinating study! I studied mushrooms for ten years before I dared to put one in my mouth. The very best way to learn them is to go out with an experienced picker. And books are your friends. Beware of the apps and some of the online "books" now that are actually AI....
I've learned over the years that most of the time whenever even a whiff of guilt or legalistic thinking shows up around not doing some kind of spiritual practice, it's time to set it aside for a while.
If it is soft-fleshed (as in, it mushes or breaks easily, and isn't woody, brittle, or very fibrous), and white or yellow on the undersides, it is very likely a chicken-of-the-woods; which is a good edible. Only the parts that break easily should be eaten.
What ever is that plant she's got? It looks like some kind of parasitic plant!
Aldee's dumpster gave me a head of cauliflower and a bag of onions on my way home last night.....hello veggie curry today :)!
They need cooking! Use them any way you would use mustard or turnip greens. You can chop up the roots and cook them together. The big daikon style radishes are grown by the truckload all through Asia, mostly for cooked and fermented uses.
One of my favorites! When you dig into the lyrics, it sounds at first like it's a song to a lover, but it's actually a song to the homeland.
Finally had to get out netting today....found evidence of deer nibbling on the new fruit trees and two of the sweet potatoes. At least I saw the fair warning in time!
I heard tell of this years ago when I lived in Bangladesh...a baby being put under the foundation of bridges and buildings.
Overwhelm and confusion for profit! They know full well that people, especially sick people, will not keep up with the paper chasing and end up desperate and pay out the nose anyway.
but when I got home, away from the teacher and the group energy, I could not get it to work at all, not even to tell which of two or three overturned buckets concealed a cup of water!
I went to a workshop one time teaching this, and by the end of a couple of hours I could find my keys that someone had buried in the gravel driveway behind my back, by means of a pendulum.....
wow!! However do you find all this out about an ordinary plant?
I wonder what happens when honeybees get to enough of it? I know that honeybees that forage on large amounts of rhododendron produce a poisonous honey... Makes me wonder if designer medicinal honey could be a thing....
Linden or basswood is one of a relatively short list of woody shrubs and trees whose leaves are edible raw, at least when young. Sourwood and rose-of-Sharon are the only others I can think of right off. The way to manage them for greens is to coppice them frequently and pick from the sprouts.
against the plantation owners.
It seems to me a lot of the systems are actually distractions from what is actually happening, which is progressive inequality. Racism, for instance, as we know it today was deliberately created in the colonial period to prevent any alliance between black slaves and white indentured servants...
I wonder how effective this is at reducing the vigor of the ivy host? English ivy is a problem invasive in other parts of the world, such as America. Might it be worth introducing for control?
Yeah I got that way about beer! I still recall the one time I got some Miller thinking to recall the good old days and about gagged! To think I used to drink that stuff and thought it was good!!
Years ago I grew some in Georgia. I think it was four or five years before they were big enough to pick some!
I find through various threads of European folklore a peculiar reverence for various kinds of water birds. The Druid order I studied with for a while said that these birds, alone among commonly observed creatures, can move freely through all "three realms"...land, sea, and sky.
Fireflies! Seeing them never gets old.
I have found that if an odd name appears in a story being presented as lore or a firsthand account, to search that word on line. More than once I've discovered that a work of fiction had been plagiarized and presented as something else!
and churchy people came from as far as Florida to protest them. Lots of LGBTQ people and activity. But it's shy of jobs, with all that that brings. Drastically rising cost of housing eventually sent us back to relatively rural, affordable, and conservative area an hour away.
For three years after coming to the state we lived in a liberal college town, Carbondale. It's near the southern tip of the state and has become a kind of refugee mecca from the vast stretch of red territory surrounding it. There are three womens' clinics.....
A rare sight tonight...three of nature's lights at once! Fireflies, stars, and distant lightning!
It is astounding how many millions of people believe this stuff, and have been working multiple agendas to bring it about for at least the last fifty years. I know, because I used to be one of those people. I voted for Reagan in 1980 because my church told me to.
You might enjoy following Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy) and curious ordinary. They post lots and lots about Japanese folklore and spirits. A huge wide diverse world of them that I had no idea existed before "meeting" these two!
This idea has been around probably since Israel was founded. I used to be deep into this, back in the '80's. Millions of people believe this stuff, especially in America, and they act on those beliefs with their dollars and their votes.
Not only is it the favorite food for monarch butterflies, but there are several papers out now about it's being an important forage for adult fireflies of several species! So milkweed blesses us with beauty day and night!
I love the smell of privet bloom, though most other people I've asked about it or been around think it stinks! Same with boxwood foliage in the sun!
Mine are Amorphophallus, and they only stink one day out of the whole year, if they bloom at all; and the rest of the summer make this really cool divided leaf with a spotted stalk.
dried them out and kept them in a jar for years! Really weird but kind of cool smell for sure. But I never thought of anything to really do with them.
Years ago we trapped this beaver on the land I was living on, it was making a mess of the woods and the creek there. Being good homesteaders we made use of every part, saving the skin and cooking up the rest. I had read about these glands and made sure to save them....
But it seems to me that if it's here and it's growing well, the land spirits at least tolerate it. And I don't know about bugleweed, but many invasives are valuable medicinals too.
So many lessons here!! Does offering an invasive somehow represent your ancestors, as newcomers/settlers in this place? I think some might question whether offering an invasive to the land spirits is appropriate...
Parasitic plants have long been a fascination of mine. There are many many kinds, weird and exotic. The very best resource I've found about them is at parasiticplants.siu.edu/index.html
I've spent many years in intentional group community settings, with anywhere from 4 to 30 people, mostly practicing permaculture and gardening. There are several ways to do this, and rather more ways to crash it....usually around the piece of getting along with people and dealing with conflict.
Even in my own adult lifetime, getting along with other people, whether relatively like-minded or not, seems to have become more difficult, to the point where I've sometimes said that friendship is becoming an endangered species....
Then over years I flip the soil from one or more beds over onto the adjacent path (which is a good opportunity to bury raw compostables), thus creating a sort of hugel bed, and the path is now where the bed was, again being filled with stuff. No digging beyond a hoeing except the initial and "flip"