Dear reader,

May in New Zealand brings autumn colors and a feeling of winding down for winter.  The dandelion plants are withdrawing into the ground, making it a good time to dig them for their roots.  You can dry them and make a nice coffee substitute. This blog link describes how.

On the other hand plants like violet are now flowering and giving off a gorgeous scent, cleavers is growing, the onion weed is up, chickweed and speedwell are lush and flourishing.

This month's blog features the plant  Oxeye Daisy including recipes for 'bruschette' and 'raita' using oxeye daisy leaves.  It makes a wonderful sight flowering beautifully all through summer along the sides of roads. There are still some flowering even now.  One day I took a photo of what I thought was a mason bee on an oxeye daisy. Turns out it is a Mason wasp Pison spinolae.  The insect is referred to as the mason bee, but the females store paralyzed spiders in their cells and not nectar and pollen, so using `bee’ is incorrect. But they are important pollinators, so we want to encourage them.  I was given a solitary beehive (see below) and the mason wasps used it from February on - walled up some of the cells, although I see most are now hatched and woodlice are using the cells for shelter.

I have run two wonderful workshops this month with another happening in Otumoetai, Tauranga on May 30th. See the flyer below.

My parents and I along with the Bay of Plenty Tree Society went on a three day journey to Eastwoodhill Arboretum over near Gisborne.  If you've never been it is well worth a trip.  It is home to the largest collection of Northern Hemisphere trees in the Southern hemisphere.

I've added flyers for two other workshops I recommend happening soon - one for raw food Christmas in July with Cecilia Strachan and the other a probiotic workshop by Jane Powell of Teacher in the Paddock.

Finally my appreciation for dock has grown since I dug out a nearly 2 foot root from the compost which just shows how deeply they can access minerals. See the photo below.

 

 

This is the view I love from my cottage balcony - I feel like I live up in a big plane tree.

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Below is an amazing dock root I got out of the compost bin that is nearly 2 feet or 55cm long.  These plants really are dynamic accumulators that mine minerals deep down in the soil. I make use of this ability to bring up minerals and turn the roots into nourishing vinegar to add to salad dressings or broths or as a tonic in water. I wrote a blog on making weed vinegars using leaves, but you can just as easily use roots.

Thank you for making it to the end. I'll sign off for this month, trusting all is well in your worlds.

Julia

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