Hope

Seeing Fairies

 

I was a day late, but I went out midsummer and gathered fern spores.  They're so tiny, like dust.  Managed to get quite a few - filled a gallon ziplock bag with the branches, from a few different species.  I left even more behind, along with a small blood offering to the mosquitoes.

Rubbed on the eyelids, the fern spores are supposed to grant the power to see fairies.  Of course, it's supposed to be male fern, which I couldn't find, and it's supposed to be midsummer's eve, when I was working both jobs, but we'll see how this does.  Maybe they just don't want to be seen, and arranged everything against me.

Time is a Non-Renewable Resource

The changing seasons got me thinking... for each year, there's one spring.  One summer.  One fall, one winter.  At most, I'll probably live eighty- or ninety-someodd years.  Living in New England has given me a new appreciation for spring and summer, and I've already let pass about a third of all the ones I'll ever see.  That should probably spur me into my various projects with renewed vigor, but all it does is depress me.

On a lighter note, I'm envious of all the herbs growing around where I work.  There's a big patch of broadleaf plantain, yarrow, ground cherry, Queen Anne's lace, lamb's quarters, mullein, skullcap... but I don't dare use any of it, because I work at a garage.  Going to see if I can harvest some seeds, maybe, and get some of this stuff growing around the house.  Not with my luck with seeds, but maybe I can disperse them and cross my fingers.  Of course, even if they grow they won't necessarily do me any good.  A lot of those I have growing in our yard already, but my husband mows them down!  Need to get better at cultivating, so I can transplant and have them all in a little plot to mark off limits to the mower.

Green Salve

I just finished making a cut, scrape, bite, and burn salve. It's jojoba oil infused with wildcrafted plantain, yarrow, and curly dock, lavender and tea tree essential oils, with vitamin E and some aloe pulp. This is my third salve, and
so far they've all turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. My mom used to make a version of it all the time - I think she added comfrey, but I didn't have any.

For some reason I was always intimidated by the process. I imagined bizarre alchemical equipment and timing and instructions that had tobe followed to the letter... Looking back, I don't know where the idea came from that it had to be difficult. I mean, I watched my mom do it. But it couldn't be /easy/, could it?

In fact, I wouldn't even say it's easy. It's trivial. At least my experiences so far have been.

It's just a base oil, plus whatever other oils, with some beeswax.

I got started with it because I have a friend who's allergic to all the over-the-counter antibiotic creams. I figured, she needs some tea tree oil! So I did some research on making a tea tree salve, looked up recipes, and whipped her up a batch.

I had fun making it, so I had to go and get fancy.

I infused some lavender and sage in olive oil for the second salve, as just a smell-good hand cream. The lavender scent didn't really seem to take very well, although I may have just been impatient. I only left it in for a couple days, but I also tried heating it on the stove for about a half hour... eventually I just added lavender essential oil, and then some vanilla extract. The smell is green and sweet, a little kitcheny but without really smelling like food.

There is kind of a trick to the oil infusing - you have to make sure all of the herbs are completely covered by the oil, because if the air gets to them they'll rot. (You also have to not forget about them.)

At some point I should probably start measuring my ingredients...

Attempts at Gardening

I have a horrible black thumb.

Every year I try to grow something, and every year I've met with repeated failures. The plants that I've shoved out in the lawn and left alone - a few crocuses, some daffodils, and a blueberry bush - have done fine. Anything I've tried to grow from seed and nurture? Withers. Rots. Gets knocked over by the cats.

Last year I had a brief glimpse of success - I had planted a pumpkin, too late in the season. I had it in a pot out on our deck. It flourished, flowered, and then froze.

This year I decided to try acorn squash, thinking that would be no problem since the pumpkin had (almost) done so well...

I started a seed in a little peat pellet indoors, then transferred it to that same pot the pumpkin had been in real quick once it sprouted. Real quick because the only places inside that are safe from the cats don't get enough sunlight, and I've had plenty of baby plants spend all their energy stretching for the light, and winding up all long and weak. Too quick because the next day, it was crushed. A bird, a squirrel, a stray twig, I don't know. However it happened, no more squash.

So then I tried planting a seed directly in the container. I'm not sure why I thought that would work any better. I waited and waited for it to sprout... then gave up and popped a few more in peat pellets. Right about the same time that the ones in the pellets came up, there was a sprout in the pot on the deck. I thought all was well and shoved the peat pellets outside on a ledge and forgot about them.

I was so proud of that little squash. It grew its first real leaves, got bigger and bigger, and I kept checking on it and taking pictures. I'd started it early enough, not too early (I live in New England) and everything was going to be great. It was a funny looking squash, but it was my squash and I loved it. Amazingly, the sprouts in the peat pellets were also still alive and growing. And they didn't look anything like what was growing in my container.

To prove it to myself, I poked around in the dirt until I found it - the little, unsprouted squash seed. I evicted the volunteer and replaced it with another of the peat pellet sprouts. 

Not a squash.

 Then, we had a few days of heavy rain. I wasn't worried, because I made sure there was plenty of drainage in the container, and my squash made it through all right. Then we had a couple of hot days, and the poor thing dried up to a crisp. Its brother sprouts in the other pellets had drowned in the rain, so I'm back to square one.

Luckily I live in a fairly rural area with a lot of native herbs for wildcrafting. I also bought some mint that's survived so far.

But I feel a deep need to be able to eat something that I've grown myself from seed. Even better would be a second generation, grown from seeds I harvested off a plant I grew. I still have some peat pellets left.

I'll let you know how it goes...

(I should probably go check on the mint!)