Weed Walking!

My good friend and bellydance teacher Michele Donner Ramsey wrote this blog post after a visit. Check out her blog Learning to Live – Living to Learn. My notes are in purple.

  I visited my most gorgeous friend Melanie the other day. We share many loves and the one I plan to explore in great detail is herbalism. I have signed up for TWO herbalism courses recently and right now I am focusing on identifying common local herbs, especially the so-called weeds! Melanie is a fabulous resource for this! She identified a few weeds in my own yard (Yellow Dock and Lambs Quarters) to my delight. I just had to go on a weed walk in Melanie’s yard while there!
We identified so many things that my poor brain did not retain it all. I should have taken my notebook with me on the walk so that I could write the names down as I took pictures… lesson learned. But I do now remember a few of them (borrowing a few books for identification helped!)

We saw a lot more, but I did not take pictures of everything especially since I knew most of them.  We saw yellow dock, lambs quarters, red clover, thistle, nettles, shepherds purse and yellow wood sorrell. (Don’t forget the plantain! She’s an abundant treasure!) I knew fleabane, which I think was one that Melanie hadn’t been familiar with. And she had a mint she did not know, which I was sure was catnip (an easy verification with my cats took care of that ID).
I had the best time! I can’t wait to do it again, this time perhaps more prepared (I’m thinking of pressing samples!)

   OK all you Green Witches, here’s a reader challenge. What the cuss is this? It grows near the artemesia on the south side of the house. It has small white flowers.