L'experience de la fumeterre

La plante sauvage la fumeterre (fume+terre) est venue chez nous.   Toute legére et délicate, elle monte comme la fumée, et depasse, et semble etouffer les autres plantes!  Comme la fumée, elle est facile a 'souffler a l'ecart' - fragile, elle se casse à la moindre touche.  

Comme la fumee qui monte de la terre, la fumeterre depasse une courgette et monte le treillis

La fumeterre au pieds s'une fenouil et une fruit de passion

La fumeterre en fleur

Une nuage de fumeterre

Nous accueilons les plantes sauvages qui s'invitent chez nous, et evitons de les voir comme mauvaises herbes, elles nous apportent leurs propriétés médicinales  (par consequence notre jardin n'est pas nette et propre comme il faut en banlieu...).  Nous prennons une poignée de la plante que nous mettons dans une petite casserole de l'eau bouillante, et nous la  laissons mijoter cinq minutes, puis le liquide est pret a boire.   Cette tisane a un gout degeulasse!   La fumeterre est conseillée pour nettoyer le fois, les reins, pour aider la digestion, éviter la constipation, réduire l'inflammation:  il faut la boire avec chaque repas pendant 10 jours en juin, quand la plante est en fleur.

Decoction de fumeterre, la coleur or-jaune avec une touche de vert

Buvex ce liquid, et vous allez crier  WOAHHRRR!

Earth-smoke, Fumaria Tonic

Our garden has been colonised by the wild flower "Fumaria" (fumitory)  from the Latin "earth smoke", and in French fumeterre.  I think it is 'earth smoke' because it arises from the ground like a cloud of smoke and silently envelopes all the other plants, although it looks very lightweight fluffy and inoffensive, has no overt weapons...

Like smoke;  fumaria rising above a courgette plant and seeping through the holes of the trelis

 JC and I have come to take a benign view of the "weeds" which plant themselves in our garden, as they always bring some sort of medicinal property, and now we think of them as a gift rather than a nuisance (although consequently our garden is not suburban ship-shape).

Fumaria taking on fennel, a passion fruit and a few weeds

Cloud of fumaria

Billows of smokey fumaria

We made a herbal tea/decoction;    take a fistful, simmer for 5 minutes in water and drink.  It tastes HORRIBLE.  Then comes the rush, rrrrrrroawhrs!    It is good for yer liver and cleans out yer kidneys, aids digestion, prevents constipation, reduces inflammation and is best taken about now, in June, in flower, with every meal for about 10 days.

Fumaria decoction, golden yellow with a hint of green

Drink this and it'll make you say RRAAAOUW

Elderflower Cordial

There is a bumper crop of elder flower this year, obviously elder trees love rain, cold and absence of the Yellow Stuff (I believe it is called sun).

I cropped 12 ripe wide open flowers from the elder which planted itself  in our garden and which is now 20 feet high and has ended the career of my rotary washing line.  The tree had of plenty of flowers to spare, and will have plenty of berries for the birds in the late summer.

I dissolved 1.5 kg of sugar in 5 litres of water, put in zest and juice of 3 lemons  dunked in the flowers, and covered it and left it to infuse in a cool dark place.   Magic, 24 hours later, aromatic elderflower syrup!  If you dare leave it 2 or 3 days, it tastes even stronger.  R insisted that I filter it (ie sieve out the odd stray floret and the lemon zest), I bottled it and kept it in the fridge (it only lasted a week - because we drank it).  I've just made some more with double the sugar and lemons, and bottled in sterilised bottles, to see if it will keep out of the fridge...watch this space for news.***

Elerflower is perported to be helpful in the following conditions  rheumatism, arthritis, and gout; upper respiratory stuff (colds; the flu; sinusitis; tonsillitis, sore throat; chills; fevers) and if taken at the onset of chicken pox or measles it helps by increasing sweating and speeding up the healing process.  They also act as a diuretic which helps to rid the kidneys of toxins.  

Not sure what happens when mixed with sugar,  but as it hasn't been heated it may well retain some interesting properties.

Update:  the cordial ferments after a week or so, and tastes even better, but if left longer turns to vinegar.  So stored remaining bottles in fridge, but none left now, as very popular with family.  A friend of mine who also made elderflower cordial this year, suggests freezing ice cubes of it to add to drinks and desserts.  Otherwise you could heat it to boiling point and seal like jam, but would no longer retain same properties I guess.

*** Update  It certainly kept a few weeks out of the fridge with 3 kg sugar, but could not test any longer as we drank it all up and wished we had made more.  It is now May 2014 and the elder is flowering again, will make more batches and do more experiments.

Ariege Mountain Holiday; St Girons Market

Saturday is market day, we arrive and stock up with food for the holiday, and to buy presents souvenirs and a bit of food to take home (no room in car for more, sadly).  Then on the Saturday we go home, we call in again.  A multinational gathering of ecologists, hippies, artists, musicians and generally all the people I like being with selling the food I like to eat in a town I like the look of...and so drones on about how wonderful it is...in the face of disapproving teenage son who buys pizza, sits on bench, eats pizza, declares the market, the entire region Boring and "full of Old People" and every time I approach the bench asks "When can we go?"

I usually buy one pot, this one from a profound potter with blue eyes, she is part of the souvenir

Organising the mountain flower honey

Garden produce on a plain table

East-West;  Young Lebanese musician selling his organic vegetarian Lebanese sandwiches;   sauce with special thyme from the Lebanese mountains, humous, smoked aubergine pate, salad, yoghurt sauce, goats cheese...au choix

Dutch wildman goatherder, wonderful life, wonderful cheese!

Here we bought particularly aromatic lemon verbena (verveine) for tisane...

JC even found a lovely 2nd hand bookshop run by a Northerner who stocks up in Paris, opens every day it is possible to sell, works hard but loves the work - JC bought Tin-Tin cartoons and book about Eco Houses...

Beatles music...

Bought apple juice here, gathered from hedgerows, (never shake the trees it upsets them and they won't produce next year), dry the apples a little before juicing, makes them sweet... he works as a volunteer for a charity and so has use of their juice-pressing facilities, also turns wood from his garden

R cruises with headphones, to exasperation of parents,but at least he took them off

market by the river

Bought some very good caramel sauce for pancakes, made by Ariege woman who went to Brittany to learn how to cook Brittany food, and sells it to Brittany people in Ariege who complain they can't get their food...that's business!

Orange is my kind of colour

My kind of people...

 

An American grandmother hippy chick, running a portable organic cafe with camping chairs unloaded from her van:  we had perfectly blended chick pea curry and rice and a spicy chai tea with milk, very very excellent

AM I THINKING OF MOVING HERE?   YES I AM.  AM I THINKING OF BUSKING IN RESTAURANTS FOR MY SUPPER GROWING HERBS PLUCKING FRUIT AND HANGING ROUND MARKETS SELLING THINGS FROM MY GARDEN?  YES.  AM I THINKING OF WEARING FLOWERS IN WHAT'S LEFT OF MY HAIR?   YES YES YES

Ginkgo, our friend

Ginkgo, the tree which came to earth in the Jurassic period and never left, can, according to herbalism, help us think more clearly and live longer.

A flight of ginkgo butterflies...

For thinking clearly, use green leaves, and for living longer, pick them as they start to yellow at the end of October.  Which is just what I've been doing, as we have a small ginkgo tree (probably a dwarf) in our garden.  I really like the fact I can gather leaves which would fall anyway, without harming the tree.   JC took a few green leaves earlier in the year,  I hope he asked nicely.   The green leaves are higher in ginkgolides  for the brain, the yellow leaves higher in bioflavinoids for anitoxident anti-aging effects.

I've realised that it has beautiful butterfly leaves.  Each has an inclusion, partially divided in two, rather like the brain.  We dry the leaves and add them to our herbal tea brews.  If you need something stronger, you can buy full potency extracts.

Ginkgo leaf spreads its wings

Moth leaf

It can also help with boosting immunity, PMS, diabetes, preserving vision, tinitus, impotence, skin aging, cancer prevention and unclogging your arteries...

One clinical trial failed to show that Ginkgo had any effect on the development of Alzheimers http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(12)70206-5/abstract
This study has lead some scientists and journalists to claim that people who take ginkgo are irrational.    Human health and human sickness is a multi-faceted thing and we don't yet understand that much about it in whole human terms.  I'm wondering whether we should avoid thinking of plant friends as wonder drugs and testing their componant chemicals on passive subjects.  All good food sustains life and maintains health, but we don't damn it because it isn't tested and proved to be a wonder drug.  And here's a funny thing: conventional drugs are tested using a placebo, to see whether the drug is more effective than a sugar pill.  BUT, if the drug, or the sugar pill, is given to the subject with love, or white-coat authority, it will be more effective.  I think there is something more going on than the "efficacy" (drug testing word) of the chemical component on controlled subjects when it comes to medicine, even conventional medicine.

For more about Ginkgo, try "Ginkgo the smart herb" by Jonathan Zuess, Three Rivers Press