Wordless Wednesday: Winter is Coming

Wordless Wednesday

Summer Living

I love what this picture says about the life I live now. There is work reflected here, but leisure too. There is evidence of modern conveniences, but also a more simple, resilient lifestyle, chosen intentionally.

In the background the sun oven stands empty, but earlier in the day it boiled potatoes and then cooked rice to perfection. During these long, hot days of summer I can cook two dishes a day, if I plan it right.

I can't remember the last time I used a dryer. Even in the winter and on rainy days, I hang my clothes up inside, but nothing beats the smell of clean clothes fresh off the outside line.

I decided not to go wildcrafting yesterday morning, cleaning, doing laundry and catching up on dishes instead and taking care of the plants I have already harvested. I emptied the dehydrator and got those herbs into jars. I saved this big bunch of nettle for the evening and sat outside after dinner removing the leaves from the stalks. I really enjoy each aspect of handling the plants, and find this one particularly calming and meditative. It's not something you can rush through. There is healing in this, of a kind that you'll never get from a pill.

In my glass was soda water and some of the spruce shoot syrup I made in May. O.k. and there might have been a splash of gin in there too! It's the brand of gin that's made with 10 different botanical ingredients, so the whole thing was basically an herbal preparation. There's healing in that I'm sure. ;)

I also made time for reading. I'm slowly working my way through the Little House Books. I loved the show as a kid, but never read the books. It makes for nice, light reading I don't care what anyone says! (Ahem....that means you ADG.) I had to laugh when a friend of mine saw me reading the book one day and told me that her classmate is reading it too. My friend is 8. Oh well, if a bunch of men in their late '30s can get together to play Dungeons and Dragons every week (Ahem...that means you ADG!) then I can read a children's book about the adventures of Ma and Pa, Mary, Laura and 'Manzo.

Around Ye Old Urban Homestead

Getting in under the wire for the Urban Homesteader's Action day, here's what I've been up to on my urban homestead this weekend.

It was crazy mild on Friday, so I biked to the garden to check things out. Here are two of our plots.
And the other two. Everything is still under a blanket of snow, but it won't be long before things are lush! We sheet mulched as many beds as we could last fall, which should make for an already-prepped, easy start to the season.

Winter is actually a good time for certain kinds of plant ID, if you know what you're looking for. This stand of last season's Evening Primrose stalks and seed heads stands out so much more obviously at this time of year than when in a field of growing tall grass and other plants. Now I know where to look for new growth, this spring and summer.
Not all is dead or dormant. I was thrilled to see stinging nettle shoots pushing their way up out of the ground under a paper bag of leaves. Hello you beauties!

After I pruned the currant and gooseberry bushes and tidied up around the wild roses I'm trying to encourage to take over, I took a few moments of rest before my feet got cold and I made my way home under the setting sun. The rest of the weekend turned cold, so I was content to stay warm inside with hot herbal teas and infusions.
I tinctured some fresh growth of willow twigs I harvested.
You can just make out the constituents extracting out into the alcohol. It's so pretty.

I've got homemade crackers in the dehydrator.And a pie fresh out of the oven. I've been hoarding the strawberries and elderberries I froze last summer, but it's time to tuck into and savour them!
Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!

The Unstuffed Urban Homestead Pantry

I desperately needed more pantry space, and my boss who is preparing to downsize to a smaller home, had two shelving units to get rid of. Thus the Unstuffed Pantry has come to be!

I'm ridiculously happy about the whole thing and after I had filled and artfully arranged the shelves the other night, I spent a long time just sitting and looking at this new edition to my kitchen.

To me it's a perfect blend of form and function, utility and style.

Some shelves are workhorses and others are display cases.

It's all practical.

Do I even need to tell you that nearly every single container and tool was handed down, found or thrifted?

This structure is going to get a lot of use. It will change and shift with the days and seasons. Some months the shelves will be fat, some will be lean. Items will be taken down, used, cleaned and returned. Repeat.

I can already sense the rhythm of its use and it feels so good. Like a heartbeat or breathing. Is that weird?

How 'bout this? I kinda feel like I've staked the centre of my universe. I've found my axis mundi, the central mountain of my life around which I'll revolve, swinging in and out of orbit, creating, tending, preserving, storing, eating, feeding, healing.

Not bad for someone else's discarded Ikea shelves and some empty jars eh?

Wordless Wednesday: Inside and Out

The Urban Homestead Series: From the Medicine Chest

I have written part of this post with the middle finger of my right hand lifted precariously above the keys, wrapped in wet mallow and violet leaves.

Let me 'splain.

A torn and irritated cuticle became badly infected on the weekend. I first noticed it on Saturday but was busy and distracted with preparing to host dinner guests. On Sunday I finally had time to pay attention to it, but it still didn't seem so bad. I treated it with some plantain tincture and that was it. By Monday though, it was clear that my finger was not happy.

I've never had anything like that happen before and it was scary because I'm a bit of a total hypochondriac. No really. I once convinced myself that a pain in my jaw was an abscessed tooth that was about to burst and spread poison into my brain, leaving me to die a slow and painful death all alone. Turned out it was actually muscular in nature, originating in my neck, which yoga and the chiropractor I work for, are able to keep under control. I learned a good lesson from that incident though: never do a symptom search for 'jaw pain' on the internet right before going to bed.

Anyway, when my finger turned red, ballooned to twice its size, throbbed hotly and eventually oozed two little bubbles of pus (I know, eww! right?), I totally freaked out. I'm going to lose my finger! I'm going to lose my hand! I'll never be able to use my new thrift store purchased, hand powered ice cream maker that friends got me for my birthday. The poison will spread to my brain and I will die a slow and painful death all alone!

Then I got a grip with my non-infected finger hand and thought, "Cool! Here's a chance to put some of my herbal learning into practice." Another person may have thought, "Jeez this is nasty, I should go to the doctor." But not me. Nope. There was no way I was going to sit forever in some walk-in clinic, breathing in germy air, only to have a curt and harried doctor give me a prescription for antibiotics and send me away without ever once actually looking at me.

Oh sure, if things didn't improve or took a turn for the worse, I would definitely have sought professional help and I recommend anyone else to do the same. And please keep in mind that the following is not medical advice, and I'm not saying that everyone should treat their own pus filled infections. Pus filled infections are serious business and you could die a slow and painful death all alone! So seek appropriate help if necessary, k?

So, as I said, I tried plantain tincture on Sunday. Plantain is supposed to be the go to remedy for wounds, bites, stings, inflammation and the like. Matthew Wood writes that plantain "is able to draw out and close up pus and infection...it is excellent for a dirty wound, to draw out the dirt and infection and leave it in a clean state, and for boils and abscesses."

Hmm...well it's possible that it did draw up the pus into the tip of my finger leaving it more red, swollen and throbbing than ever, but my finger wasn't getting any better and after a day of this I knew the plantain simply wasn't going to cut it. I needed something stronger.

I already knew about the anti-bacterial qualities of garlic and remembered learning about similar effects in turmeric and always keep some in the house for that purpose as well as for culinary deliciousness. Last year I preserved fresh garlic in honey (which is also very healing and anti-bacterial) so I took a bit of the garlic honey and mixed in some turmeric powder to create a paste and placed that on my finger and wrapped it up. With that in place, I went to my herb books to do some more research. I read up on some of the herbs I had harvested and stored last summer and settled on two currently in my apothecary (a.k.a. my bathroom closet).

Joyce Wardwell, author of The Herbal Home Remedy Book, writes about what plants can be used for inflammation and infections including mallow and violet.

"Mallow. Apply poultices of mallow root or mallow leaf to draw out infections and soothe inflamed tissues. Apply the poultice as hot as is tolerable, and then add a hot-water bottle or hot cloth on top to keep it warm. Renew the materials as they cool. Continue this treatment until relief is felt. This remedy works equally well with plantain leaves.

When my husband awoke to a wound with ugly red streaks radiating from a throbbing armpit (indicating blood poisoning), the doctor was unable to see him for several hours. So I treated it as above, and within an hour the swelling had noticeably decreased. By the time of the appointment, the red streaks were hardly noticeable, so we canceled and kept up the treatment. By morning, the wound itself was nearly healed.

Violet. Violet poultices will soothe inflamed skin sores and abscesses, as well as help to draw out stubborn infections. p. 133"

What kind of mallow wasn't specified here, so I went back to Matthew Wood to see what he had to say. Of Malva sylvestris and neglecta or Cheeses and Low Mallow, he writes, "A simple poultice of the widely available leaves are used in folk medicine on infected finger wounds, skin inflammation, insect bites and bee stings. It draws out inflammation and pus..."

I only have Malva moschata, but read in another source that it can be substituted and used similarly to the other mallows so that's what I did.

I also realised from reading Joyce Wardwell that I was missing the important element of heat. Heat also draws out infection and inflammation and also raises the temperature beyond that which bacteria can survive in, which is why infected wounds become hot and inflamed. It's your body's own way of fighting off the infection.

So I poured hot water over the mallow and violet leaves and when it was cool enough to put on my skin without burning, I poulticed my finger with the leaves, refreshing them periodically.

This has been my treatment protocol for the last couple of days. I do hot mallow and violet poultices morning and night, and bandage with the honey garlic, turmeric paste during the day. (Yes, my finger does smell a little like garlic, but only if you get really close, so no one else would notice except for me, and I don't mind it.) The swelling, pain and heat have subsided steadily and things are almost back to normal. I will keep up this routine until all the symptoms are completely gone to ensure that the infection is totally cleared and doesn't come back.

No doubt this is a time consuming process and I've been totally focused on healing my finger for the last few days, but for me it's still a much better option than waiting in a walk-in clinic and taking prescription drugs and the dependence on cheap fossil fuels associated with that. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful to have access to mostly free health care and if I had thought the situation warranted it, I would have made use of the system. But I also really like the sense of empowerment and independence that comes from being able to practice basic healing and health care in the comfort of my own home with remedies as close as my garden or the kitchen cupboard. It's comforting to know that, for whatever reason, should I no longer have easy or affordable access to conventional health care (for the long or short term), there are other options available to me.

Foraging in the City

"O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.—
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!"

At this time of year, in this part of the world, there's not a whole lot of green in the landscape, especially in an urban environment. If there hasn't been a fresh snowfall for a while, and the sky is overcast, the end of January starts to look gritty, dirty and bleak. Not quite of The Road proportions, but close. I cast my eyes about, hungry for some spark of colour and freshness.

Enter the evergreen. Thank god for the evergreens. It's the conifers that get me through. Spruce, cedar, fir, juniper, pine. I love the scrubby bushes, the thick hedges, the majestic silhouettes of the trees. I love all the shades of green from emerald to blue, and the smells are downright heavenly.

And because there isn't much else going on in the plant world these days and I'm suffering from FWS (Forager's Withdrawal Syndrome), many of the conifers provide some lovely opportunities for winter foraging and medicine making. I've already enjoyed tasty pine tea and harvested juniper berries, which I'll talk about in another post. Last week I experimented with pine again, this time with an external preparation.

I took a long walk along the Rideau river checking out the pines and spruces. "Hey baby, looking good. Those some fine looking needles you got there. Yeah, you know it. Can I touch your bark?" Ok, maybe it wasn't quite like that, but I did get up close and personal with a few trees, looking for identifying marks and distinguishing features. I smelled and tasted the needles of various trees to discern differences in scent and flavour. This one lemony, that one resin-y, tangy, spicy, bitter...

From what I've learned so far, the best time to harvest conifers is in the late winter, early spring when there is new, fresh needle growth, so I wasn't planning on taking a harvest that day. However, as I walked along, I found a small pine branch on the ground that had fallen or been knocked down. I picked it up and carried it home.

Not knowing how long it had lain on the ground, and considering the season wasn't optimal for harvesting I decided I wouldn't bother with making a tea or tincture. I decided against an oil preparation for the same reason. I guessed that a strong alcohol maceration might do well to extract pine's constituents, so I went with 90% rubbing alcohol to make a liniment. A bottle of rubbing alcohol is cheap and if nothing else I would still end up with a disinfectant and sore muscle rub. With nothing to lose, I felt this was a suitable experiment to play with.

I cut some needles with scissors and filled a small jar with them.


I poured the rubbing alcohol over that and capped the jar. The liniment started to green almost immediately.


Because rubbing alcohol is toxic if ingested I made sure to label the jar clearly and thoroughly. This is for external use only! Also, I still haven't identified the exact type of pine tree, which I really ought to do, and plan on, but for now it shall remain Pinus species.


I took another picture of the liniment this morning in daylight. I can't stop looking at and fondling this jar. I am completely enamored by the gorgeous emerald green colour. It's so friggin' pretty I could cry.


I'll use this external liniment for sore muscles, joint pain and chest and sinus congestion. Mrs. Grieve talks about pines here and Susun Weed praises the white pine here.