Her mother called SLI inquiring about an herbal class, but the one we host isn't until October, and a full day adult-focused course on plants probably isn't the best fit for a 3rd grader. So, I invited Victoria down to hang with me for a few hours this morning to look at plants, pick a few and learn a bit about herbal medicine.
First, we headed out to the garden. I showed her a few different plants but she was really excited about the edible flowers and all the lettuces growing in the garden. So, we made a salad - at 9:30 in the morning. She picked borage flowers, mustard flowers, wild radishes, squash blossoms, broccoli greens, purslane and of course, some lettuce.
While we prepared the salad, we made some herbal tea. I have a bunch of dried herbs in my collection. Victoria opted for a blend of dandelion root, rose petals and lemon balm. Good choice.
I have to say, one of the cutest things she said, which was no more than an hour into our session, "I'm having fun! Can I come back?" Aww :)
After our morning snack, we headed back out to the garden to look at some more plants and pick a few to make a salve. In case you're not familiar with salves, it's an herbal infused oil mixed with bees wax to solidify it. Pretty basic, but great for topical wounds, cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. It really just depends on what herbs you put it in. For our recipe, we used yarrow, plantain and calendula. Now, I would generally always recommend using dried herbs for oil infusions, but since we were strapped for time, we used them fresh. We heated them in the oil for a while, drained the herbs, added some bees wax and viola - salve!
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| Victoria with her salves: Peppermint & Tangerine scented |
When we finished all that, we headed back outside once more to check out the mulberries, currants and raspberries. We spent the rest of our time snacking. Not atypical for a day at SLI.
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