I thought this was a nice picture of red clover and red raspberry leaves drying on the cattail mat. I love the vibrant color of the red clover blossoms. We tried the infusion today for the first time. We found it to be mild and pleasant. It takes a lot of dried blossoms to reach the one ounce of plant material required for one quart of infusion though. We scavenged these blossoms from the farm and also along our new favorite bike route. The blossoms were along a road, but it seems like the road is seldom used so we risked it.
The other exciting find from our bike trips was yarrow. It is one of my most utilized herbs. We dried some for tea (mostly in the event of a tension headache for me but there are many other possible uses including if you feel a cold coming on). We also put some in an alcohol based tincture. It is an excellent bug repellant in this form, and it can also be used to stop bleeding or in any situation you would use neosporin. Tincturing it in vinegar is our new experiment. I've tried drinking alcohol tincture for headaches before and it does help, but if I'm already feeling nauseous then the alcohol is too much. Supposedly the vinegar will draw out the alkaloids just as well and hopefully not upset my stomach. The final experiment is yarrow in oil. Yarrow is pain relieving and antiinflammatory so I may try it topically for sore muscles. It also may be a nice choice for wounds when I don't want to deal with the sting of alcohol. If anyone wants reports on how well the different menstrums(sp?) work... Let me know!
Ok short blog this week. Maybe I'll have more pictures to motivate my writing next week...
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