and now for something completely different.

squick warning, if you're grossed out easily, you may want to pass over the next paragraph.

completely different and sucky. so, i've had a boil (or abscess, whatever you want to call it) on my right leg for some time now. I get them from time to time, they're usually not a big deal, although very painful. I got one about 3-4 months ago that refused to fully drain and go away (I know, squick, right?) It'd get big, get small, get big, whatever. Well, I had spent a day taking echinacea to head off what I felt could possibly be an oncoming bout of nastiness, as I felt feverish and yucky. The next day, the boil proceeded to become very, very large. and very painful. (echinacea, I feel, definitely contributed to it's growth. My immune system was like, okay, screw this nonsense, we're just gonna push this mess right outta here.) I couldn't wear pants, couldn't sit, couldn't walk, it was ridiculous. So, I went to my friendly MD and had her cut it open. (Squick again.) Because of the location, it's extremely hard to find a good way to tape it. Plus, the skin is incredibly sensitive, and hey, I can never get it taped without pulling out some short n curlies. This was Thursday. By now, the skin where the paper tape has been applied and reapplied is red, raw, angry, and very, very painful. (The abscess looks fine, though, so it's not some kind of spreading infection.) With limited options for taping, I hobbled to the pharmacy, got GIGANTIC surgical pads in hopes of covering the entire raw area in addition to the abscess, and some of that "it sticks to itself not to your skin" style of tape. Kind of like an ace bandage. Proceeded to wrap the entirety of the top of my thigh in it. I feel totally ridiculous, but at least my skin doesn't sting as bad. I would probably call the on-call doc and ask about when i can stop covering it up, but it's the 4th of July and I'm not dying of any complications, so that feels a little frivolous.

Anyway... in the garden. Wes and I finally waged war on the back yard today. I hoed the long bed that was overrun with weeds, yanked weeds out of the boxes, Wes cut back the weed mayhem and grapevine disaster along the side of the house, and I gave some plants a haircut, pulled out the arugula that was way past edible, and in general, cleaned everything up. I now have grape leaves to brine, I need to get the kale & chard at least partially harvested and blanched and put up, same goes for the green & yellow beans.

One disaster has befallen us so far - we had one beautiful delicious looking purple pepper that we were anxiously awaiting. It was just about done. Today I found it over by the fence, all clawed up and gnawed on. Some woodland creature BASTARD stole my pepper. I know that the animals have to eat, too, and our garden is a sitting duck, but cmon. First all the strawberries and then my pepper? :/

Another thing I don't love is the bugs. Holy bejesus if I were a landscaper I'd have already died of DEET poisoning. Being bitten by mosquitoes can send me into endless fits of "omg what if I contracted equine encephalitis..." I know I let my imagination run away with me, but I've had so many health issues over the last year, dying of some weird disease due to a bug or spider bite is a scary thought.

In good news, I put up my first batch of jam. Mulberry jam, to be exact. It's deeeelicious. And I did it all by myself. :D We harvested the mulberries out of the back yard. I was going to do the strawberry rhubarb jam tonight, but it's looking like that's not going to happen. My first priority is dinner (a delicious squash blossom frittata, which I should probably already have started on), and then dessert (gluten free brownies with gluten free frosting), because being around so many delicious home made treats that I couldn't have last night at my dad's party pissed me off. So, when we went to the store to pick some stuff up for dinner and some stuff for jam making (CRAP I FORGOT THE SUGAR), I saw some gluten free treat mixes and was like, BINGO! I get back to the cart and Wes is all, what's this crap? After he had just offered me a donut he and Andrew were sharing. If looks could kill...he looks at me shooting daggers at him with my eyes, and goes "what?" and then it dawns on him that I can't have any and he's all, oh, sorry.

The treats aren't even the worst. The worst is the beer. I miss it. I miss Huma Lupa Licious, which is currently on sale. I miss being able to sample Wes's home brew. I get to smell them, sure, but it's not the same. A glass of wine does not satisfy, and a mixed drink does not sound appealing. It's the harsh, bitter beer that I crave. Oh well.

Time to make that frittata. And brine those grape leaves. And make the brownies. And think about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow (make jam, harvest veggies & put up, do some homework, harvest and tincture some motherwort in the back yard). Oh! Later, I'l post pictures from our recent garden & field & woods adventures. Scout's honor.

food and medicine.

For someone incredibly lazy and out of shape, I sure did a lot of physical activity this weekend. Friday ended early, and I got to go out to Proud Lake with Wes, who had already been all over Ortonville Rec and was hot, sweaty, smelly, and scratched to hell. It's funny how it ends up with us, he's looking for mushrooms, I'm looking for plants, so one of us is always waiting (slightly impatiently) for the other one. We went in the back way, parked by some rocks, and not ten feet from where we parked was a giant clump of exactly what I'd been looking for - monotropa uniflora. A strong sedative, nervine, antispasmodic, as well as for "sore eyes". (Funny how so many of the tinctures on hand are sedative and nervine...) I've also heard (read) it is a strong pain reliever, and have seen anecdotal accounts of it used for shingles, severe muscular pain, and other extremely painful conditions.

I had Wes take a picture of me lovingly cradling this beautiful and amazing plant as I carefully dug it out of the ground (it bruises badly very easily, much like mushrooms), but the only thing he got a shot of was my cleavage. *grumble* actually, several shots.

Speaking of bruising like mushrooms, indian pipe is epiparasitic to the family russulacae, so...lactarius and russulas, from what i understand. that's so wicked.

We walked around after I quickly tinctured it, found some chantrelle pins, a couple of chantrelles, and what we believe to be a blewit. Also, an old hericium?? How could that have survived the winter?! It's not the right season for hericiums. There was also pink wolf's milk slime, which was fun to play with, and some stinkhorn corpses. I harvested about 2 ounces of fresh hepatica triloba, which is mildly astringent and mucilaginous. Wait a minute... *looks around* where'd my big ol bag of liverwort go? I'll hurt someone if they threw it out.

After that, it was out to cass benton for some ill fated disc golfing, because my buddy (whose AMAZING psychology for dummies blog can be found here) lost his disc, and then we had to pick up my roommate and take him to work. we drove by a fire department training session on the way home, only I didn't know that's what it was, all I saw was this huge conflagration, thought it was someones home, and nearly burst into tears. Haha.

Saturday it was off to class, and jesus lord. When my teacher says up hill and down dale, he's not kidding. It felt like 100 degrees out, brightly sunny, and he's trucking along up and down big ol hills. I felt my out-of-shape-ness then, very much, and was quite embarrassed.

Something interesting happened though. A classmate was talking about something one of her family members is afflicted with called dufresne's disease. And I had a little mental spasm, mimicked a contracture with my hand, and then totally interrupted my teacher (like the ass that I am). Wait, that produces contractures, doesn't it? Du-fray-ns. Yeah. So my teacher goes, OHHH, trigger finger! And then starts explaining to her what happens in the disease and the best course of action. I just thought that was really flippin weird, on my part. I've never had Dufresne's, nor known anyone who did. I have a vague recollection of learning about it in massage school (good god I loved pathology, was my favorite class and still is), and it was neat how my body accessed that memory, like my hand involuntarily was like, hey, contracture. Makes sense though - kinesthetic learner accesses memories kinesthetically. go figure.

Sunday was strawberry picking day with my sister, so we rounded Andrew up, threw him in the car, and headed to Ann Arbor for pickins. It was hot, it was tiring, we were hardly finding any strawberries. End of the season, everything's picked over. And this was just the first twenty minutes. My sister and I moved to greener pastures, ie snap peas, which were easy, and we could sit in the dirt and gossip while harvesting. Wes utilized his best wildman talents, moving down rows with the speed and ease of someone who often forages and finds delicious mushrooms and interesting things. I was shocked when he wound up pulling about 8 pounds of strawberries out of said plants. Took me a couple of hours to wash and hull them last night, with help.

in the vein of reading politically charged books on food, i started on animal, vegetable, miracle by barbara kingsolver. it's pretty good, i'm perhaps a third in and i started yesterday. i went up to the vitamin shoppe on lunch to grab some elecampane tincture, of which they were out, but one of my favorite parts about going there are these delcious fruit and nut abominations of granola bars. they're gluten free and delicious, my favorite being almond and coconut. as i was driving home, i happened to glance at the label...it was from australia. i munched guiltily the rest of the way home. here i am reading about a woman who makes her family eat only things which can be had from their county for a year, and i'm eating something flown in from australia. *cringe*