Dandelion Salad

I've been reading about the tradition of using bitters to stimulate digestive juices to help breakdown rich meals. As my poor old tum has been sadly in need of assistance lately, I am trying having a little dandelion salad starter before my main meal. Its just a handful of washed, chopped dandy leaves mixed in with a handful of conventional salad leaves and I chucked a tomato in for colour and dressed with olive oil and a splash of my homemade nasturtium vinegar (more on this another time!)

I have to say, I think it helped... I had a roast dinner afterwards and didn't have any problems till about 4 hours afterwards. Will definitely use again, especially as it was really rather tasty!!

Weeds and Wildflowers

I always intended Earth and Tree to be a repository of information and resources, a kind of 'bringing together of interesting stuff' relating to a more natural and earth-centred way of life. To this end, I spent some time (more than I anticipated!) yesterday organising all the blog links on the side column into categories so that we can find things more easily.. if your site has fallen off, please let me know as it won't be intentional! Some of the wonderful blogs could have been listed under several categories but I just went with what felt right at the time .. hope you will find it useful?

Speaking of bringing together interesting stuff...

Its a good time of year for Backyard Herbalism with all the weeds and wildflowers in abundance, including the dandelion .. if you're wondering what you can do with them, check out Greenwoman's post on making a Dandelion Salve and Yolanda's post on making a Soup with the buds.



And if you liked yesterday's post on the Cowslip, you should also see the Wiggly Wigglers post on Cowpats and Cowslips which has more interesting information for you.

Herbal Haven

A little bit of herbal wisdom .. the Herbal Haven spring newsletter

I'm hoping to visit their stall at the garden show at Capel Manor horticultural college tomorrow (am excited!)

Backyard Herbalism

The wonderful Greenwoman has started a series of posts which explore the use of all the wonderful weeds around us under the tag backyard herbalism.

I am itching to join in the fun, though it can be difficult in a 'gritty' urban environment..

When I was out and about this week I saw beautiful great clumps of gorgeous dandelions in full flower on my way up the high road. But I couldn’t pick them .. they were all along the verge by a small green space maintained by the local council and if they hadn’t been sprayed with chemicals by the gardeners then they will definitely have been sprayed by passing dogs (and humans, I’m sad to say). When I got home, though, I looked out some dandelion wisdom from a fab old book of country cures I picked up recently in a charity shop.. this book always has something to make me chuckle, but I'm sure there is innate wisdom in a lot of the practical, cheap and common-sense advice it contains.

For example, the simple statement that 'for many ailments and conditions, all that is really needed is for the body to be well and truly flushed out ... one of the most effective plants for this is the Dandelion, which can be found in most gardens growing as a weed'.