Sunday, June 12, 2011

an exciting discovery


More than once,
when I've seen the clusters of tiny starlike flowers

image courtesy of  irishviews
and then later in the summer,
when I'd see the clusters of dark purple berries
(which look an awful lot to my untrained eye 
like poisonous poke berries)

image courtesy of thriftyliving.net
I would wonder
(sometimes to myself, sometimes aloud)
do we have elderberries on our property??
~
Book learning is great
and I've learned so much via the world wide web
but sometimes,
it would be nice
to have a real live person
teach me things.
Things like painting furniture and identifying herbs;
'cause you really don't want to mis-identify an herb!

Since I am not aware of any 
real
live
herbal wildcrafting
enthusiasts,
after years of wondering,
I finally pulled out the book,
googled,
and grabbed a branch off the bush.
And I discovered that
yes, we do, in fact,
have our very own elderberries!
And, of course, the accompanying elder flowers...

It makes me happy that I have herbs (besides plantain
growing wild on the old homestead
 but I'm especially tickled
because elder flowers are one of four ingredients
in our most-used momma-made herbal remedy.

Now, I just need to learn how to harvest them.
Time to hit the books.
again...

1 comment:

  1. Yeah! It's great to learn such wonderful useful information - especially such that you can use just for you!

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