Spring Herbs
We get through Winter, snow melts and Nature starts showing us, revealing to us plant allies to help us bring in the Spring! There definitely is something to eating seasonally and listening, watching to Spring as she hints with herbal health.
Nettles - Urtica dioica leaf springs up very quickly. It is only April 5th and they are already about a foot tall at our home. They like moist woods and fields and streams. This says something about what they may help with our inner environment such as helping with allergies. They are loaded in vitamins and mineral ( calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, A, C, K). You can put them in pestos, soups, and even in smoothies ( although I have not tried that). I know personally how yummy they are in soups and are a leading herb in my weekly herbal vita-mineral infusion tea for myself and my kid.
Dandelion leaf - Taraxacum officinale grows everywhere doesn't it. You can find dandy in your yard, fields, and well everywhere. Although I wouldn't recommend eating them unless they are 50 feet away from streets, R &R, wires, and in the most healthiest places. They also tell us to eat them as we thaw out from winter and need to help our liver and provide nourishment in the form of calcium, iron, magnesium, A, C, K, and is potassium sparring. forage them before they flower. Dandy is great is salads, pestos, soups, and drinks are made with them ie. chicory.
Violet flower and leaf are found in fields, forest paths, your lawn, orchards, beaches, and I feel are some of the sweetest flowers. They contain vitamin A and C! You can eat them in salads, jams, pastry, candies, soups. These are lymphatic friends (leaf) in the spring to help clear and move things along. There is another that can be a dear friend to us in the Spring. Ostrich ferns - malteuccia struthiopteris fiddleheads, new unfurled fronds, can be eaten after boiled for ie. 15 minutes. They grow in wetlands, edges of rivers, forests at around 8 inches tall. They must be boiled thoroughly due to naturally occurring toxin.
Perhaps you and your loved ones, like kiddos, will start to look around yourselves more in nature this Spring and find some plant allies. Remember to always have gratitude when picking a plant ally and never take all of them. Leave some for the bunnies and pollination, and if you have children, I hope you share with them the wonder of finding plant allies in nature.
blessings, Lotus Anwen Wachiwi Sagebrush (satya)
