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...