One of the homeplay assignments for my herbal class this month is to find a wild edible weed everyday and to eat it. I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy this practice until I started walking around our ranch and noticing all the edible weeds. Here are a few of my favorite things this month:

Picking miner’s lettuce with Zoey early in the morning and watching her eat the wild weed with me.  She can already correctly identify it around the ranch.

Drinking a modified version of Rosemary Gladstar’s Liver Tonic Tea with wild edibles growing on our ranch. Here’s the recipe I’ve been making:
–3 parts nettle leaf (Mountain Rose Herbs)
–2 parts dandelion leaf (picked near our orchard, found in your backyard?)
–2 parts lemon balm (Mountain Rose Herbs)
–2 parts red clover flowers (picked near our lake)
–1 part water mint (picked from the spillway of our lake)

Pour quart of just boiled water over herbs and cover. Infuse for 20 minutes.

Watching Zane walk. In the past week, Zane has really taken off with his walking. He still crawls a bit, but mostly walks these days. He wobbles and bobbles and falls.

Yoga With Adriene. I’ve been doing her 30 days of yoga for the past 60+ days because I can never manage to do yoga daily, although in my dream world I rise with the sun and go outside on snake rock (aka “the loading dock”) and do yoga before the wee ones wake up.

We’ve started planting our vegetable and herb garden. I’ll wait until some sprouts come up before I post any photos. I found this quotation I wrote in an old journal from Sue Monk Kidd’s book When the Heart Waits and thought I’d share it with you as I think about waiting for our plants to grow:

She writes about going on a retreat and she sees a monk just sitting quietly. She wonders how he does it and he tells her–

“I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.”