Drink Your Tree

Further to the below...

'Nother thing you can do with the balsam fir is strain any left over water that you've steeped the needles in, add some more water if you need, and a bit of white vinegar and you've got yourself one fine and lovely scented cleaner. I scrubbed my bathroom with just such a concoction and baking soda this weekend.

My favourite thing about using my own all-natural, homemade cleaners is that I never have to worry about inhaling toxic fumes into my lungs or getting harsh and corrosive chemicals on my skin. I'm not flushing them into our waterways and drinking systems either.

Christmas trees are often balsam firs, 'cause they smell so darn good. However I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be using the needles from those trees for tea or simmering for an air freshener, because most of them are grown with pesticides. If anyone has an organic Christmas tree though, there's no reason why you couldn't repurpose some of it for eating, drinking, air freshening and cleaning! It doesn't even have to be a balsam fir. Fir, spruce, pine and cedar species are all aromatic, medicinal, high in vitamin C and edible (in reasonable amounts- don't overdo it!).

Even if you don't have a real, organic Christmas tree, when you're out and about in the world, take a sniff and nibble of your nearest conifer. If you like the smell and it tastes good, carefully pick a handful of tips to bring home and try!

(Don't forget to practice good wildcrafting ethics.)


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"When simple advice about lifestyle would suffice."

Ah...relief. The headache that had been plaguing me since early afternoon is gone. Not one to take pharmaceuticals if it can be helped and thinking about the words of wisdom from yesterday's post I quietly slipped away from my desk and into an empty room of the clinic I work in. I found some space against the wall and went into a yoga posture I learned from Michael Stone at a weekend training a couple of years ago. Closing my eyes and turning my attention inward, I took a few long, deep, slow breaths, until I heard the phone ring and returned to my desk. The pain relief was immediate. I could literally feel the discomfort dissipating and the space between my eyebrows relax, my jaw loosen and the tension lift in my neck and shoulders. The difference I felt was so striking that it was accompanied by a feeling of mild euphoria and gratitude. I'm pretty sure Advil can't do that!

On How to Practice Medicine

I love this story Paul Bergner tells in an article in Plant Healer Magazine.

"In medieval Baghdad, the “license” to practice
medicine was given as permission to practice in the
marketplace. Examination was held, not written
examination, but interview, assessment, and direct
observation of practice. One of the rules was that an
individual would be disqualified from the practice
of medicine if they were observed to 'use a strong
herb when a mild herb would suffice, use an herb
when a food would suffice, or use a food when
simple advice about lifestyle would suffice.'"


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Housecleaning

Ugh. Sorry for so much changy changy on the blog. I really wanted to have a winter nature themed background, but it turns out I just couldn't live with it. It was way too busy and difficult to read, so I'm switching to something simpler and cleaner. It's not wintry, but I like the birds up there in the corner. I like to pretend they are my crows. Yes, the ones that roost near me are now *my* crows.

Anyway, I'll stick with this design for a while I think, and change it again in the spring.

My apologies to your eyeballs.

Oh, and I'm also turning the comment moderation on for a bit, since I've been reciveing some spam lately.

If it is goes away, I'll turn the moderation off again.

That is all. Thank you.

Abies balsamifera

Forget nasty, toxic air fresheners. At this time of year I pick a handful of tips from the balsam fir tree and place them in a pot with some water that goes over the element on the stove that vents the oven. The heat from whatever I'm roasting in the oven simmers the water and releases the heavenly aroma of the fir, and adds a little humidity to the dry winter air. (Careful. The resins tend to build up on whatever pot you're using and are hard to wash off.)

The needles also make a nice tea and have medicinal uses as well.

I think the balsam fir may be my favourite of all the conifers.

From the apothecary...

"Let thy kitchen be thy apothecary;
and, Let foods be your medicine."
~Hippocrates

"People ascribe the greatest healing power to drugs that have come from farthest away, drugs that cost the most. In my long experience I have come to believe that people go to the ends of the Earth to look for something they could find right on their doorstep. If only we could learn to trust Nature"
~French herbalist Maurice Mességué

She Speaks for the Trees

Some you may already know how much I heart Diana Beresford-Kroeger, so it's no surprise that I'm thrilled to hear about her upcoming talk this Sunday in Ottawa, for the Canadian Organic Growers.

Details here.






Image by Mark Ryden, for the book Speak for the Trees.

We can live well in its light

One last excerpt from Crow Planet before I bring it back to the library today.


"But here we are, intricate human animals capable of feeling despair over the state of the earth and, simultaneously, joy in its unfolding wildness, no matter how hampered. What are we to do with such a confounding vision? The choices appear to be few. We can deny it, ignore it, go insane with its weight, structure it into a stony ethos with which we beat our friends and ourselves to death- or we can live well in its light."


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Of Composts

"Of composts shall the Muse descend to sing,
Nor soil her heavenly plumes? The sacred Muse
Naught sordid deems, but what is base; naught fair
Unless true Virtue stamp it with her seal.
Then, planter, wouldst thou double thy estate
Never, ah, never, be asham'd to tread
Thy dung-heaps."
~James Grainger

The moon is up, the crows have passed and in the autumn gloaming I carry two buckets across the back yard. One bucket comes from the bathroom, the other from under the kitchen sink. Both get emptied into the compost bin. I reach for the pitch fork and give the mass a turn or two. There is just enough light left to make out a few cabbage leaves and a bit of pumpkin on the top of the pile. Steam rises. I hover my hand a few inches above the top and feel the heat there. I am satisfied. With the addition of extra nitrogen from my urine, I don't think the compost will freeze this winter as it has in years past. The buckets get a quick rinse and are returned to their place in the house.

There are a million things a person could do when they get home from work on a Friday night. I like to tread my dung-heaps.




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Coming Home to Roost

After posting about losing my camera a while back, a friend got in touch with me letting me know that there was an extra camera in his household that wasn't being used, and I could have it if I wanted to. Yes I did! I was thrilled.

And I had the camera with me on my way home from work yesterday and managed to catch a few shots of the crows heading to their roost.









Keep in mind, that this is just a couple of sections of the sky and one portion of the flock. It usually takes about a half hour for all the crows to fly overhead at any given point. This flock is coming from the north west. I've also seen them flying in from the east and the north. So that should give you an idea of the numbers of birds we're talking about here. I'm guessing it's about an 1/8 of the human population of Ottawa.

These crows will probably hang out in a few 'staging areas' near the roost, before they make their way to the actual roost to settle in for the night.

If I can I'll try and snap some pics of the roost soon.

Yes, another post about crows...

I don't quite know what it is about crows, but I'm becoming increasingly fascinated by them. From their twilight flights and massive roosts to their highly intelligent ways, the more I learn about crows the more I want to learn. I also find them very visually striking against the urban landscape, especially at this time of year when the tree branches are bare.

This video gives a really good idea of what the roost near my home is like at night.



And this one is really cool too.


And here are some examples of crow art that I'm enjoying very much.

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Finally, after watching this TedTalk, there'll be no doubt in your mind just how smart crows are!


Incidentally, I'm not super impressed with Joshua Klein's take on 'developing mutually beneficial relationships' with crows. Using crows to pick up our garbage or to find our lost iPhones sounds a little demeaning to me and I also thinks he hugely misses the point between the connection of large crow populations and the health of our ecosystems. Still it's a pretty neat look at crow behaviour.

We Walk Around Like Poems

Another lovely excerpt from Crow Planet:

"We are incapable of isolation. Every time we sip wine, feed the cat, order pizza, watch Survivor, every time we do anything, anything at all, we are brushing, however surreptitiously, however beneath our awareness- however, even, against our will- a wilder, natural world. Such awareness is simultaneously daunting and beautiful. It means that everything we do matters, and matters more than we can even know. Yes, of course we must do all of the things we now know by rote: we must replace our incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, and recycle, and compost and ride our bikes, and buy organic, local, biointensive, fair-trade. All of it. And if we can manage these things with a joyful heart, then all the better. But this is not about checklists, is it? About the reduction our planetary relationships to a mean tally of resources used, saved and available? It is about a habit of being, a way of knowing, a way of dwelling. It is about attentive recognition of our constant, inevitable continuity with life on earth, and the gorgeous knowledge this entails. There is a crow's nest in the neighbor's yard, and there are feathers at our feet. We walk around like poems- our lives infused with meaning beyond themselves."


I think about this passage a lot as I observe the crows in my neighbourhood. There is a roost close to my home that I've taken to visiting. Every night at dusk the crows fly overhead and easily 100,000 or more of them roost in a small patch of woods, to fly away again at dawn. It is both an incredible and disturbing sight. Disturbing because there is a connection between crow populations and habitat destruction and biodiversity loss. As the environment becomes less hospitable to other species, crows become one of the few species resilient enough to survive. Growing crow populations are an indication of how much we have already lost. This is a sobering thought as I search for a way of being, knowing and dwelling in the world with a joyful heart. It's a tricky balance to achieve to be sure, but one that I am bound by my beliefs and values to strive for every way that I can, with every breath I take on this crow planet.

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300 Years of Fossil-Fueled Addiction in 5 Minutes

Here's an interesting and fast paced perspective of the issues, narrated by Richard Heinberg.

Reading Crow

Just got this book out of the library yesterday. I'm only a few dozen pages in, but I'm loving it. The author had me at her first Wendell Berry quote.

And then I read this:
"...but it remains our daily lives, in the places we live, that make us ecosystemic creatures; these are the seat of our most meaningful interactions with, and impact upon, the wider, wilder earth. We are connected by the ways that we choose, consume, and share water, food, shelter, and air- just like all the other animals. We cherish the few, sweet days we manage to escape to places we consider true wilderness, but the most essential things we can do for the deeply wild earth have to do with how we eat, how we drive, where we walk, and how we choose every moment of our quotidian urban lives."

Amen sister. Amen.

Fellow nature lovers, get thee to your nearest library and check out this book! Oh and have a look at her blog too. It's delightful.

Somewhere Between Earth and Sky

It's very mild today, overcast and foggy. I love fall days like this, when the ceiling of the world hangs low and close. It's so cozy yet mysterious. The bare tree branches etch secret runes in the mist. The scent of fallen leaves rises up off the damp earth, spicy and warm.

I finish work early on Tuesdays. I'll go home just long enough to change into garden clothes, slip on my boots, stick an apple in my pocket and then head to the garden on my bike, as the crow flies. Literally. The area of the city I live in is home to thousands of crows and the flight path they take to roost at night is very similar to the route I take to the garden. Through my quiet neighbourhood streets, across the busy road that ends at the river, down the alley that's dark and cool and green all summer, past the old farmhouse (one of the earliest homes in the history of Ottawa), along the hedge path with hawthorn, rowan and sumac, skirting the cricket field by the hospital, through the goldenrod field and I'm there.

I'm pain free today and my hands and wrists feel strong. I can grow and make and build and create this rich life I call my own. And today will be all about going deep. I'll reach into the ground to harvest more chicory, dandelion and sour dock root. It will be a good day for getting my hands dirty, and earth under my nails. And when dusk falls I'll head home, maybe as the crows pass me overhead, as the lights come on in the houses where I follow my path, somewhere between earth and sky.





Update: I can't find the primary source for the beautiful image above, but I found it on this site here. Dear artist, whoever you are, your image is awesome and I hope you don't mind me using it in my post.