Last week, my son and I visited my parents for a couple of days. They live in a small town and have a big beautiful backyard that they don’t spray and always has lots of beautiful wild plants in it!
On this trip, I made dandelion vinegar from the plants in their yard. There’s so much growing there: lemon balm, raspberries, yarrow, rhubarb, walking onions, chives. They have an elderberry tree that I intend to make tincture from in the fall.
All around their little town are greenspaces that aren’t sprayed so I spent some time looking around for wild plants. My dad and I harvested wild leeks one evening. We found fiddleheads but they weren’t quite ready yet.
My best day, however, was finding several huge patches of wild violets in a forest area by a river. SO many!
Lots and lots of violets!
I was walking with my son and my mother. My son LOVES to eat violets and so he spent the next 1 1/2 eating violets (and talking about firetrucks) while my mother helped me pick huge amounts of violets for tincture and elixir.
My mother has always aided me in my hare-brained schemes of all kinds. I thanked her while she helped me pick violets, even though she’s not so sure about this herbal healing thing. She still spent and hour stooped over picking tiny flowers because she’s my mother and “that’s what mothers do.” (According to her!)
Mom and my Son walking in the woods!
The other lovely thing I found in my parents backyard is this sweet motherwort plant. I was going to just leave it there to grow but my parents are planning to re-dig that area to plant vegetables, so I transplanted it (with permission from my parents and the plant itself of course!) I also transplanted some lemon balm (which will stay in a pot!) and a tiny tiny dandelion plant that my son says he needs medicine from.
All round a wonderful visit with many amazing plant oppourtunities!
lion hearted 