Nettles

 

I spent a pleasant half an hour yesterday afternoon in my back yard cutting organic Stinging Nettle leaves into a bucket.  I was careful (this time) not to touch any part of the plant to avoid the stinging.  Nettles grow wild around here.  I used to pull them out, roots and all, and chuck them in my fire pit.  Now I’m just careful not to touch them.  I harvested a half a 5 gallon bucket of fresh nettle leaves with my vinyl kitchen gloves on – enough to fill six dehydrator trays.  This first batch is promised to my niece Brodie.

I remember once when my boys were small and they were playing a game of hide-and-seek in the back yard.  One of them (Taylor or Darin) hid in the nice big green plants and came yelping out, jumping up and down as they were stinging from head to toe:  he had hid in a patch of stinging nettle.

 

Stinging Nettles growing by the river

Urtica dioica, often called common nettle or stinging nettle, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant, native to Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and North America, and is the best-known member of the nettle genus Urtica.  Nettles are an amazing herb.    They’ve been used medicinally for hundreds of years to treat joint/muscle pain, eczema, arthritis, gout, anemia, urinary tract infections, hay fever, joint pain, tendonitis, insect bites, sprains, and strains.

It’s no wonder that stinging nettle is a wonder herb:  per 100 grams (1 cup = 89 grams) contains Total Fat 0.1 g; Sodium 4 mg; Potassium 334 mg; Total Carbohydrate 7 g; Dietary fiber 7 g; Sugar 0.2 g; Protein 2.7 g; Vitamin A 40%; Calcium 48%; Iron 8%; Vitamin B-6 5%; and Magnesium 14% (% based on a 2,000 calorie diet)!   It can be taken as a tea, tincture, or included in a skin cream.

As with all herbs, nettle should be respected when it comes to possible interaction with other herbs, medications, or medical conditions.  It’s always a good idea to speak with your health care professional.

• Nettle can raise or lower blood sugar so diabetics need to monitor their blood sugar closely to determine the effect of nettle on their own body.
• Stinging nettle can have a diuretic effect, raising the risk of dehydration, and it can increase the effects of Diuretic drugs
• Stinging nettle may affect the blood’s ability to clot, and could interfere with blood thinning drugs.
• Stinging nettle may lower blood pressure, so it could make the effects of drugs for high blood pressure stronger
• Because stinging nettle can act as a diuretic, it can increase the effects of these drugs,
• Stewed stinging nettle leaves enhance the anti-inflammatory effect of NSAIDs, reducing pain in acute arthritis.
• Pregnant women should not use nettle.

 

Drying Nettles

This morning, the nettles were crisp and dry in the dehydrator overnight.  I crunched them up in a Ziploc bag then put them in a Mason jar to store.  I’ll get outside later and cut off some more stinging nettle leaves to dry.

 

 

 

 

Internet Thumbs-up

I grew up in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s in a time with NO internet.  Yes folks, it wasn’t until around 1998 that I even heard of this new fangled thing:  the internet.  Oh ya, back in the mid-1980s, we had a Commodore 64 which was more of a video game system than a computer, I came to discover.  But at least the kids learned the rudimentary task of writing programs ……..and stories.   So in 1998, my oldest son, Robin, convinced us that a new computer system was the way to go – the future – and it would help the other kids with their schooling……well THAT sold me!  Since we knew NOTHING about these computers he volunteered to come along to help us pick it out.  Under his tutelage, we walked out of the Futureshop store with an $3,200 IBM desktop  computer (laptops hadn’t been invented yet), scanner, and printer (dot matrix).  WE were kings!  Robin graciously helped set it up for us, even creating an email account for me  – and ,the next day, once I figured out how to turn it on and get to my email account (again with his help over the phone)  I was off to the cyber races and haven’t looked back since!  And the World Wide Web, I learned, wasn’t some kind of giant spider’s web.

I have to say, I have come to LOVE social media…..well Facebook in particular  (ya,ya, I know….I’ve heard it’s really run by the CIA ……).   It has given me a gift of reconnecting with cousins who live far away (Graham in England) or whom I’ve lost touch with for many decades (Stacey in Cape Breton) or long lost high school best friends I haven’t talked to in over 40 years (Cheryl in Hamilton).   I love to ‘chat’ with family members far away, like my sister Betty or my 3 grown sons who live across the country.  In fact, I don’t usually use my home telephone long distance very much anymore, unless I have a hankerin’ to hear their voices.  I joined Facebook in 2007 (“My Mom’s cool – she’s got Facebook!”)  originally because I wanted to see my son Marty’s pictures that he was posting.  Marty is a world traveller…..a nomad….who takes great photographs and creates awesome videos.  http://vimeo.com/42168505   My oldest son Robin has also posted pictures and videos of his travels along the West Coast of North America.  I feel like I’m there, like a fly on their shoulder….. and it gives me immense pleasure to continue to be part of their lives like that.

And who uses ‘snail mail’ (ie. Canada Post) anymore?  Well I have to admit, that I love to get birthday cards in the mail once a year……  Now we have electronic mail to communicate on a daily basis.  I can get a response from one of my children usually within hours.   And sometimes my daughter Nellie, sitting right beside me, sends me an Instant Message on the computer LOL…..usually to be funny or tell me she loves me.

Laptop

Last summer, I took the plunge and bought myself a laptop computer……..and I’m hooked.   Well that might not be a good thing since now I can comfortably sit in my recliner chair instead of that old hard chair at the desktop computer………. all the time if I want!  It’s addicting!  I love to read and sometimes I spend hours reading on the internet, even though I prefer the printed word.   And I can gaze out the window at all the yard work that’s just waiting for me…..  I guess if I try hard enough, I can justify that the computer typing is very good exercise for my arthritic hands…………

Sewing

But today’s job is not ‘playing’ on my computer or planting potatoes – it’s helping my daughter Nellie sew her costume.  But first I’ll have to fix the sewing machine as it’s acting up again (it happened before but I can’t remember what I did to fix it).

 

 

So, regrettably, I must conclude this GMoms post and turn off my computer  — for awhile anyway.

On the Inside Looking Out

 

April Gardening

Today I got busy after lunch outside in the 10 degrees celcius sunny day.  I started off with a sweater on but quickly shed it as I warmed up.    First I went down to the pond and ‘backwashed’ it to water my new raspberries.  I can see little leaf nodes on them all so I’m very pleased that they seem to have ‘taken’ in their new bed.  Next I dug out a dozen large Ostrich Ferns that I had made a mental note of last year – they had crept around the pond, way beyond the area that they began in.  These ferns grow about 4 – 4 1/2  feet tall as well as spread every year so it was time to get control before they began to unfurl to fiddleheads.  I replanted them immediately in a shady spot near the deck.

Next I went over to my raised-bed ‘kitchen garden’  and buried my “compostables” which I had brought out earlier.  I added another portable section onto this ‘compost bed’ and covered it with an old storm window to keep the dog out.   While I was there, I planted some lettuce seeds in the bed that already had lettuce coming up from last fall.  Finally I planted the new Rhubarb that my new friend Val gave me  -thanks ‘Farmgal’-  right beside my kitchen garden.

Orange Daylily

Since we are expecting rain for a few days, I decided that this was a good time to move some daylillies to their new spot at the front ditch.  This ditch is the bane of my existence!!  The older I get, the more difficult it is to maintain because it is steep.  I know that my youngest child is finishing high school this year and may, some day,  move away on his own.  Right now, he cuts the ditch for me easily and in just 10 minutes.   I can handle all the rest of the yard maintenance on my own, but this ditch is literally very painful for me to mow.  SO, I decided to change out the grass for orange daylillies and variegated Goutweed that eventually will fill in and I’ll never have to mow.  I’m not removing the grass – are you kidding, that would be too hard!  I’m just moving the new plants and digging them right into the existing grass.  It sure is slow going though.  The other day, I planted one 75 foot row of variegated goutweed near the top of the ditch and the next day, suffered “repetative stress disorder” in my right wrist.  Well, okay, the arthritis didn’t help…..  and digging and sitting on the slope, bumming my way along was ALOT of work.  Today I replanted 50 day lillies about a foot lower than the row of goutweed, which filled about 2/3’s of the row.  I estimated that I’ll need to re-plant 300 Day Lillies and a couple hundred Goutweed plants/roots on the one side of the ditch.  And it’ll likely take 3-4 years to fill in enough to start choking out the grass.

Dew on Miscanthus Giganteus

Val had also given me some Apple Mint, so I planted it right beside the hydro pole near the ditch where it can spread as much as it wants.  One more thing I wanted to do before I came inside was to move some of my Miscanthus Giganteus to a spot along the fence in the backyard.  This type of ornamental grass is the spreading type not the clumping type and boy does it spread!  I’m trying to stop it from taking over a patch of Purple Coneflowers so I thought I’d dig it out and replant it.  The root system is massive and solid on these plants so my shovel had to be sharp and I had to be ruthless.  I probably should never have planted that clump where I did in the first place…….   Well after struggling with this digging, I needed a break so I just moved the wheelbarrow full of Miscanthus beside the woodshed – I’ll plant it tomorrow morning.

Now it’s 4 o’clock and ‘break time’ is over.  It’s time to start thinking about making supper:  barbequed steak, fried onions,  yummy potato wedges, and carrots.  I expect that by the time I get this all done, it’ll be time to walk the dog and get ready to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs  (Go Sens Go!).

After being awake since 5:30 a.m., I hope I’ll be able to stay awake long enough to see who wins the hockey game……yawn!

Thanks to my sons Marty and Melvin for taking some awesome garden pictures!

Wood Stove Cleaning Day

Yesterday was “clean the wood stoves” day.  A wood fire can be highly romanticized but in reality, there are maintenance chores which cannot be ignored.  It’s not too difficult a job for this GramMom, even with these arthritic joints.   I heard that the weather was supposed to be above zero degrees celcius (32F), so it seemed like a good day to get dirty.  When water started dripping off the icicles hanging from the roof, I knew it was time to get busy.   As I already mentioned in a

My cookstove

previous blog,” I Love Wood Heat”, I have two wood stoves in my house:  a cookstove and a pellet stove.  Both stove fires need to be out and ashes cold in order to clean them thoroughly.   So the day’s sunny and 7 degrees C was perfect to go with “passive solar”  heat while my stoves were being serviced.  I began my morning by cleaning the cookstove.  My son Darin sweeps the chimney every fall so I was okay there.  But a cookstove has a firebox for the fire and an oven that the heat and smoke go around before heading up the chimney……and this gets covered in thick soot.  I have a special scraper on a long handle, which came with the stove, to use for removing this soot.  I took off the four cast iron “burner plates” over the oven so I could access the soot on top of the oven and down the sides.  In addition, there is a nameplate below the oven door which is removed to stick in the long handled scraper for removing soot underneath the oven box.  It’s messy, but worth cleaning as the heat can make direct contact with the oven and work more efficiently.  It usually takes me less than an hour to scrape away all the soot, re-coat the cast iron top with olive oil, and wash the chrome and other surfaces.  It looked brand new and was ready to fire up again!

Next I did my mid-season pellet stove maintenance.  I went outside to the chimney of this stove which sticks out my basement wall a meter (3 feet) off the ground.  I have a special little pellet stove chimney brush which is about as big as a baseball, soft bristled, and connected to an 8 foot flexible rod.  After removing the  chimney screen, I easily brushed the chimney in just a few minutes.  I then went back into the house and removed the clean-out cap from the chimney pipe behind the pellet stove, letting the little bit of ‘fly ash’ to drop into a used bag.  Next I just had to rescrew the clean-out cap back on and tape it up with aluminum tape.  While I was down there and dirty, I cleaned the fly ash from the inside of the pellet stove, a weekly chore.

And after these chores were done, I  cleaned myself up with my solar heated hot water, which had been warming up all day in the sun – for free!

So today it’s back to normal temperatures outside (with a forecast of -20 C tonight)…….and nice and cosy inside.