Party loot!

Joolz and I went to a barbeque / picnic yesterday afternoon, deep in the countryside about 40 minutes drive outside Edinburgh.  Lovely in the summer and not too good in the deep winter snow we had for months this and last year.  Our friends rent a bungalow there with a big garden – the landlord is also landlord of substantial tracts of land there, so they have beautiful walks.  They have been there three years, not avid gardeners, and every year the local farmer comes round and clears out their veg patch (no veggies) and generally tidies up.  He’s due any day now again.

There, as we explored in the depths of the overgrown vegpatch (5 or 6 longish raised beds, as far as I could see) we found a humoungous amount of comfrey… and we don’t have any at all in our Edinburgh central gardinette!  2 Minutes, a spade and a fork later, and we were digging up a particularly nice clump, much to our friends’ delight - Julia doesn’t know what it is and ‘hates the stuff’ as it gets everywhere – and home it came with us.  We also rescued a rhubarb patch (hope it will take this early in the summer), and I managed to get rather a large amount of Cleavers without roots)  into a large plastic bag too – it may not have liked the plastic, but I didn’t fancy taking it home as outerwear

Walking in the woods behind their dwelling we followed a wet, marshy path which we discovered was inhabited by hundreds of tiny, tiny froglets bouncing all over the place.  Gorgeous little things.  Apparently they wander into the house when they are grown up and watch T.V. with Julia.  Amazing, the educational facilities available for reptiles these days! Becka, the labrador, doesn’t quite know what to do with them – if she ever notices them – such a gentle soul is she.

I’ve promised our friends comfrey ointment or cream from their vegpatch offerings

And… had some of the Orange gin yesterday evening – YUM!

Tincture of Plantago lanceolata

Here it is, finally!  I’ve shaken lovingly every day and have been rewarded with an extraordinarily green / black tincture tasting of … plantain.

Several receptacles were commissioned to strain and decant the tincture:

 

 

First  strained through muslin into a mug, then into a larger bowl, then through muslin again into bottles.  400ml.

As you can see, the remaining pulp of plantain leaves were absolutely dry and crumbly.  Menstruum has done its job extremely well in extracting the juice.

Peppermint hydrosol fini

It’s beautiful!  Fragrant, clear with a very faint green tinge, and a full jam jar’s worth.

It bubbled away for a good 3 – 4 hours (can’t quite remember what time I put it on) after having macerated for about the same length of time.  Masses of steam escaped from the home-made still, but I ended up with this 1lb jam jar’s worth of hydrosol.

Next hydrosol Lemon Verbena!

Peppermint hydrosol

Fun, fun, fun again!  I’m making peppermint hydrosol using James Green’s recipe and instructions for home-made still (see book below).  First assemble your equipment:

One large pot (canning pot?) with a lid that you can turn upside down on the pot on which the steam will condense and flow down to a point (well, a handle in my pot’s case).  The red thing is a colander which you stand in the pot on top of the water and herbs to raise the bowl above the bubbles when the liquid is boiling.  Large bowl and scales for weighing peppermint and large knife and rolling pin for chopping and bruising.  Other than that all you need is a bag of ice and something to decant the finished liquid into.  Oh, and maybe a filter paper if you want to catch some of the precious oil (there won’t be much with a home-made still).

This is what the peppermint looks like as it’s macerating in the cold water.  Nothing too revelatory here:

After I’ve taken Joolz to the airport tonight I’m going to make the hydrosol

Plantago lanceolata

The tincture is nearly ready to go – another 6 days.  I’ve been shaking twice a day and whispering loving words to it.  It’s an amazing plant – and everywhere I go now, even in central Edinburgh, I see it peeping up in lawns, at the side of pavements, by walls and pathways, all along the Waters of Leith and the canal, and especially up on the Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat, which is where I harvested mine.

I’ve been doing a little more research into its properties and characterictics – when I harvested it on Arthur’s Seat, all I could remember was Kym (Murden’s) refrain on my one day herbal medicine extravaganza with her about how amazing plantain is!  So ‘Thank You’ Kym

No wonder plantain, or ribwort, has been a major component of the home apothecary for so long – it has so many uses.  A selection:  it’s a soothing expectorant and antispasmodic for coughs and bronchial congestion, promotes lung tissue repair through the silica it contains, is mildly antiseptic and used in colds, tonsilitis and chest infections.  good for relieving catarrh and sinusitis, the mucilage soothes the cough reflex.  It’s good for bringing up old, stuck phlegm (too much information?) and for hot dry coughs.

For digestive problems it is equally soothing and antispasmodic, also astringent, so good for irritation and inflammation in stomach and bowels, also for gastritis, diarrhoea and colitis.  Apparently it’s also very good for haemorrhoids.  It’s astringent properties are used in excessive menstrual bleeding.

Its antiviral properties make it useful against the herpes virus and adenoviruses and excellent for urinary tract infections.

Plantain also… does this ever end?… is a refrigerant, which means that it reduces high fevers and clears toxins.

Externally it’s magic for insect bites and stings (due to its antihistamine properties) and for cuts, bruises and grazes.  Rub a few leaves to bruise them and put them straight on the spot.

It’s one of the few herbs that benefit from being dried at a slightly higher temperature than others, up to 40 – 50 degrees C, after bruising to release some of the fluid from the leaves.  I may try the oven… never dried herbs in the oven before, I have always used either the airing cupboard, the boiler cupboard, or just hung them up to dry from the ceiling.  I’m not sure any of those (certainly not the ceiling!) get to 50C.

Orange Gin

So the Grand Marnier Domestiqué was adapted for Orange Gin, as there was not enough brandy… but the gin version is fantastic!  Highly recommended

Have now started a Plantain Tincture… a jar stuffed full of plantain leaves chopped very fine and filled up with a mixture of plum brandy (very high percentage alcohol) and regular cognac (50%).  Shake vigorously twice a day for 14 days and then strain the mixture through a very fine muslin and bottle the resulting tincture securely.  Plantain is very good as a vulnerary (wound healer) and you can use it externally for scratches, bites and grazes – lots of other uses internally as well, diluting a teaspoonful with water and drinking three times a day.

Next is going to be dandylion roots and leaves – leaves in tea or as a tincture as a diuretic and roots as a tincture for a mild laxative.

Grand Marnier Domestiqué

This is so much fun!  I have good brandy, a big, juicy organic orange, some light brown granulated sugar, a glass jar just big enough to take the orange, with a metal lid with 4 holes punched in it, some string and 4 tooth picks.  I’m going to make Grand Marnier domestiqué
Here’s the book I got the recipe from:

The Herbal Medicine Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual

Herbs

I’ve been inspired – again – by the seductive beauty of herbs, local herbs, and their use as tonics, remedies, lifters, brighteners, waste disposal enhancers, friends and allies.  In my slightly random journey through the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy’s ‘Discovering Hebal Medicine’ course, I’ve started to look at the lovely Dandylion in a new light. 

The first insight that has landed is that I am not always sure – as I used to be in my ignorance – as to whether what I think is a dandylion, is actually a dandylion at casual glance.  James Green’s wonderful boook ‘The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook’ came to my aid in the first few pages, in which he points out most helpfully that dandylion has bald leaves, not hairy or lumpy, and that the flowers sit imperiously alone on their stems, not sharing or branching.  I knew that, didn’t I?  No.

At a distance there are a number of dandylion lookalikes which I have often mistaken for the real Pisenlit.  On closer investigation though, their stems are harder and thinner (not so much milky juice therein) and branched… more than one flower head coming out of the same stem.  Hmmm.  And their leaves are hirsute and, in fact, not the right shape at all for a plant named ‘Lions’ Teeth’.

I may become a right pain in the … demanding that we stop at every yellow headed candidate on Arthur’s Seat, in order to determine whether they are what I once thought they were.  As we did this last weekend, turning a swift tour of the rocks into a lengthy tramp across meadows in pursuit of yellow blobby things.

Frogging and reknitting

I’ve started a version of Shaelyn – gold stocking stitch with various lemon yellows for the lace parts.  Then I added a longer lace insert, knitted several more pattern repeats and cast off.  Two weeks later, I realised that the reason I hadn’t blocked the shawl was because I didn’t like the longer lace repeat.  Off to the frog pond!

Blogging again

Blogging?  Haven’t done that for months.  However, I want to marvel again at what wondrous things shawls are.  To think that a mere 5 or 6 years ago I was anxious about starting a shawl lest I should appear (to myself rather than anyone else) of the grandmotherly nature and no good for anything except rocking in a chair.

Moving to Edinburgh has changed all that although I did start the shawl journey before I emigrated from Sussex.  Up here shawls are a wonderful way of ensuring that whatever the weather does, there is protection.  So many shawls have been born:  Victorian Lace, Forest Canopy, Shetland Triangle, Simple (with rather complex adjustments), Ishbel / Fishbel, Ulmus, Lace Shawl, Hamamelis, Day Break, Meandering Vines… and a variation on Day Break which is not on Ravelry yet.

I’m itching to start another one, not sure yet which, but I have in mind Shaelyn or Morlynn Shawl – or maybe Photosynthesis.  So many decisions, and so much yarn in the stash to knit up!

Talking about stash, I did clear out the stash cupboard and re-order my yarns into colour boxes, clear blues, duck egg blues, teals, pinks, oranges, reds, deep purples, dusty lilacs, whites blacks and greys, rich greens, sea greens, yellows and golds, browns, and finally sock yarns.  Yarns I have acquired in the last couple of years, from K1 in Edinburgh and earlier on this year in Stirling Knitcamp are in baskets rather than hidden away in the yarn cupboard.  Rather a lot of lace weight and 4ply appeared.  I’ll be knitting until I’m 303 to get through it all, but that’s fine by me.

Cats update:  they are both doing fine and enjoying being inside when it’s cold and outside when it’s sunny.  Lots of space to play and chase each other, and lots and lots of devoted admirers at our knitting group evenings