A couple of days ago a friend and I went for a little walk around our neighbourhood to get an idea of what grows wild around here. I find that this is the perfect time of year to identify plants and trees once the leaves are nicely developed and flowering is underway. We were not disappointed by all the options of potential free groceries, remedies and folk magic supplies.
Upon moving south one of the things that I lamented was not having very many rowan trees around me anymore. However, I guess my fear was misplaced because there are a whole bunch in my immediate area.
Right now the rowans are in full bloom, and while their flowers are stinky, I think that they look glorious. All I can think of is how many berries will be laden on those trees come late summer/early fall.
A laneway just around the corner from our building proved to be especially fruitful with with rowan, apple, elder, staghorn sumac, crabapple, hawthorn, honeysuckle/woodbine, raspberry, and cherry. There were pretties growing lower too, although I don't think I would trust to harvest anything from ground level in that spot.
Thankfully throughout our immediate area there are spots safer to harvest from and so far we have found dandelions, lemon balm, peppermint, motherwort, daylilies, comfrey, shepherd's purse, curled dock, rhubarb, chickweed, yarrow, cleevers, stinging nettle, pineapple weed, columbine, garlic mustard, milkweed, catnip, solomon's seal, creeping charlie, chamomile and lily-of-the-valley growing aplenty.
On our way back to our building we were greeted by a pair of crows that were up to no good. They stopped their antics long enough to peek at us before resuming their domestic dispute over a found robin's egg.
We have a wildcrafting day planned for early next week, so in the meantime we are dreaming of what lovely thing we can concoct with the things we find. I saw a yummy-looking roasted golden beet pizza recipe that calls for garlic mustard pesto... {!!!}.
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Sláinte!Laurel
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