I put turmeric in my tea every morning. Just a half a thumb sized piece of fresh turmeric, sliced fine, tea poured over it. Add a little grating of black pepper because the piperine in the pepper makes the curcumin in the turmeric useable, and I have my tea with milk. It sounds odd but it tastes really good – a little chai slant on ordinary black tea. And I…
This is number two in my garden pharmacy series, a series (in no particular order) of the herbs that I think earn their spot in the garden at least partly because of their value as medicinals.
So, a series on the easy to grow, multiple-use herbs I grow at least partly for their medicinal use. A retrosuburbia garden medicine chest. After my cold last week, I started to think about how useful it is to have basic medicinals growing where I can just go out and pick, even when I am quarantining so as not to pass my germs on, even if pharmaceuticals get tangled up…
It is year three of this retrosuburbia challenge, and most days now we are eating substantially what can be produced from this little, 500m2 suburban block. No food miles, no packaging, no energy loss through processing or storage. With important gaps – cooking oil, dairy products, flour – but also with some surplus shared with neighbours, and at least in spring of a la Niña year and not taking our…
I have a cold and it has made me very aware of the value in having medicinal plants in the garden.
It’s spring. The white cabbage moths have arrived, en masse. But they don’t seem to be doing much damage. So here are some of my speculations about why.
Here we are in the odd position of celebrating Halloween, a festival that, in European tradition, marks the start of winter, when thoughts turn to mortality and all around are reminders that every living thing dies. But tonight I will light the fairy lights in the carport and dress up, I think perhaps as a dragonfly, or maybe a mud wasp? Some predatory insect anyway, and make a batch of…