Today we braved the weather and realized that a little rain isn’t really that bad after all.
In fact, it was really FUN!
After wandering around, both high and low, freezing our fingers and toes, we enjoyed a variety of homemade (and store-bought but easily do-it-yourself) teas. From his personal foraged stores, Brother Williams brought hops, peppermint, chamomile, raspberry leaf, osha root, sweet root, horsehound, and stinging nettle. (I foraged my blends from Walmart and brought honey lavender, roasted dandelion root, elderberry lemon balm, and a mountain huckleberry blend from Montana – which was actually a gift Sister Stanfill gave me a while back.) Now that you know how easy it is to make tea, you can use any of the ingredients listed – and others safely gathered or bought – to create your OWN unique and delicious blends.
Plus we had hot chocolate.
Alfalfa seeds and flowers! I love the little spirals! Actually, I love these blossoms, too. Large fields of alfalfa in bloom smell divine in the heat of summer. You may notice they look very similar to clover. In fact, if you compare the alfalfa and clover leaves, they look even MORE similar. (That would be a fun nature journal page! You can use internet photos if you need to.)
Hackberries! Look for the sandpaper-leaves and the dark blue/purple berries. These are chewy on the outside with a big(ish) pit in the middle. They sort of taste like honey! The tree bark also has some weird ridges that look like crocodile spines.
Wild Asparagus! Only eat the stalks the shoot up in the spring. This older stuff with the berries that has leafed out is poisonous. This reminds me of a book called Stalking the Wild Asparagus which, yes, is on the book list. It’s a collection of recipes and stories about foraging for food. The photo with berries is the plant we found. The other photo is from Minnesota to give you a better idea of what the plant looks like before it goes to seed, produces berries, and looks all sad in the rain.
Desert Olive Tree. Um… this looks super tasty being all bright blue. But they are REALLY bitter. I actually didn’t think it was bad, but at the same time, I was good with trying just one.
We also found honeysuckle, ragweed, oak trees, flowering sage brush, buckwheat and moss! Now, if you ever thought you would ever be interesting in MOSS – I have a book for that, too! And actually, even if you aren’t interested in moss, you probably will be after you read THIS book! Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer. And yes, this book is also on the book list. You will never look at moss the same way again. Plus, it’s just a beautiful and delightful book to read.
Books:
Here are some more fun photos of our trip.
Next field trip: Brighton Lakes!