MyHerbCorner

Posts Tagged ‘question’

In our area harvest time has started. The fields and gardens are full of ripe veggies and fruits.
I saw some red berry loaded hawthorns and a lot of acorns.
In our garden hazelnuts and walnuts are ripe and we enjoyed this cute little visitor

I guess not everyone is happy to see a hedgehog in New Zealand since they endanger indigenous bugs and lizards.

There is also this beautiful flower blooming which I have never seen before.

The leaves have spots on them and the plant is building a lantern-shaped husk like I have seen in physalis. After a few Google clicks I found out that this flower is called Nicandra physaloides and belongs to the night shade family. It is also known as ‘Shoo-fly plant’ because the juice of the stems and leaves can be added to milk and set out for flies. When flies drink from this liquid they die shortly after.
It is also known as ‘Apple of Peru’.

My calendula gives me some flowers and I am so happy to see this uplifting colour intense herb in my garden

To keep some colours indoors I also make potpourris from the leaves which fall down of fresh flower bouquets while they scent our dining room. I love also the smell of dried willow leaves… mh… so autumn like

But the best of all is our colourfull meal fresh from the garden! We even cultivate oyster mushrooms!

Please click here for a sneak peek into my husband’s mushroom farm

While sitting in the garden and enjoying a book, I had my bottle of yarrow blossom tincture by hand.
Where it is nice and cool in summer you have company in seconds… yep, not only sandflies but also mosquitoes. So that’s were yarrow comes handy as natural insect repellent. While I normally use yarrow ointment or oil to massage onto my skin, I decided today to take yarrow tincture in a sprayer. At that time I had no sandflies around but mosquitoes tried to get a nice sip of blood from me. After I sprayed my arms full of this pungent fragrance I was free for 10 minutes but watched a mosquito on my spray bottle!
How dare!
For a moment I questioned the yarrow tincture regarding as a repellent… but, yes there was non on my arms so it must be effective
Anyway, I had really different experiences because when I sprayed it onto my husband the little bloodsucker were the least impressed and did target every bit of bare skin.
Hm, I heard the blood composition makes a difference too… and yes, I am the one who has the least problems in the family… maybe because I eat the most garlic and other things making my skin not that yummy for insects?
I don’t know.
What do you think?

Oh, I mentioned before I had a book with me. It was Herbal Wisdom, by Matthew Wood. He has a few pages about yarrow and I was very pleased to read that the herb picked from the small yarrows growing on gravel and sandy places have the most medicinal properties. Actually I didn’t knew that but this was what I picked the last time when I made the yarrow oil infusion.
When I learned from my old German books as a child there was never mentioned to use flowers only. I just picked that up a few months ago and today’s yarrow tincture was exactly that. I wonder what I will discover… anyway, the leaf tincture had the same results with mosquitoes like the flower tincture from today. Maybe internal use may differ?
Do you use yarrow and if yes, what kind of experiences do you have?

Oops! There popped just a picture into my mind of a herb-woman from Styria (Austria) who sold dried yarrow flowers! Hm, wonder what she used it for… and nope they haven’t been the small sturdy ones, they looked like big well grown yarrow. But they all were white.
Did you know that some people swear the pinkish yarrows are more effective? I think it may be because they are rarer then the white ones.
Have you experiences with the pinkish ones?
I used them back in Austria ages ago. I haven’t found them more effective actually the white ones were stronger in smell and taste, but as you may know this can vary form patch to patch anyway

I am so excited to find new growing things every day on our small property. Just when I was weeding out our front garden I found a small oak tree

Mmmmm, I am already dreaming of acorn coffee and acorn cake and…

Ok, maybe I have to wait quite a time… but it’s just wonderful to finally have a place to let trees grow and use their fruits and nuts and other medicine like bark and leaves.

Not all my discoveries are that great to use as daily food, but I do love them because they bring me warm memories from my childhood when I wandered through the woods… like this small European Holly (Ilex aquifolium)

In my old (very old) books it’s poisonous fruits were used for constipation or epilepsy. Even the seeds were roasted and used as coffee replacement. Think I’m just not that adventures to try this out, while the suggestion to bundle some leafy twigs together and use to clean the chimney makes more fun to try out

A big hurray was this lovely hawthorn (Crataegus) when I discovered him just under some wandering Jew (Tradescantia fluminensis)!
In our area there are no hawthorns unless the one I discovered when we walked a long in the dried out creek.

In the garden we have some trees I don’t know. And one of them has this red fruit.

It must be a New Zealand tree I suppose. It looks like a kind of ash… do you know what it is?

There is also this blooming shrub which is higher then me.

Maybe I will find them one day in a nursery, but the next nursery is pretty far a way and I have to wait…
We have also some young plants in the garden of a shrub (I assume it will grow into a shrub or tree) which leaves contain an orange coloured juice. But the leaves have no smell.

Some of our trees are ‘decorated’ with usnea
This is a small one but there are growing such a lot of bigger ones.

Usnea is a medical plant you can collect the whole year round, when ever you need it. It has anti bacterial properties and can be boiled to a strong tea. To take it’s bitter you may like to use the first boil only externally for treating wounds or make compresses.
My indigenous American friends use it as Vitamin C herb in winter when other things are rare. It is also used for cough or lung problems due a cold.

Another interesting little friend on trees are this Judas’s ears (Auricularia auricula-judae)

This time I am 100% sure it is this funny jelly fungus
I actually haven’t tried it but if there are some more on this tree I may make a meal out of them

For now I will have a relaxing evening in my rocker. This room is filled with twigs of twisted willow (Salix matsudana)
We had to cut down a real huge branch which was hanging onto the road. Now I took most twigs inside and everything smells so nice. Unfortunatly I can’t make medicine out of it. When I tried some leaves and then chewed on a piece of bark it was very clear this willow hasn’t the salicylic acid in it I was looking for. Maybe the leaves could be used for a tea or bath… have you ever used twisted willow?

While I was weeding out grass and nightshades in the front yard I found two lucky clovers!

I was also happy to find Sheep’s sorrel (Rumex acetosella)

And look at this gorgeous tiny viola. I don’t know it’s English or Latin name so if you can help me out I would appreciate it. I remember to have seen it on Lusach’s salad… so I may ask her…

… anyway, I also have another question. Do you think this is Judas’ ear?

In Austria we had similar edible mushrooms which are named Judas’ ear, but I am careful since we are in NZ and there may be lookalikes which could be dangerous…

My husband was busy to bring this birch some relieve from an ivy which clinched to her and sucked her blood.

I am so happy to have a birch in our garden. The leaves in spring are delicious in salads and you can collect them if you need a help for infected bladder or urinary tract.

In Europe I also collected the sap and will show you in Spring, if possible.

In our little forest we planted my avocados. Hope they doing well there.

While digging a hole for them we found another larva I don’t know.

We have also discovered this lily in our corner.

Christoph was very busy and now all cut trees and other twigs are processed. Here he used our bench as alternative for a … sorry, can’t find the English word for it… ‘saw horse’ (thanks Hana!)

Anyway, it worked well

While my husband was busy with his saw, David was the whole time in our ‘wild corner’ (we call it that way because we leave this corner to the birds and plants without weeding out)

Anyway, he told me he was collecting…

…  Kawakawa fruits. Unfortunately this ones aren’t ripe yet (they turn orange when ripe)

But I am lucky there are still fruits in a height David can’t rich them

If you want to make tea of Kawakawa (which is said to purify the blood), use the leaves which are eaten by bugs because it is said they are higher in medical properties (Very interesting, because you shouldn’t do that with other herbs. Normally you collect the untouched ones because they are stronger and higher in medical properties. Only weak herbs are munched on…)

My little herbalist and his ‘product.’