Have I ever told you how I feel about my nose?

Or at least, my tent and recent exploits as an herbalist? :-)

The tent
A short history: when my family decided that my brother needed his own room, and hence I would need to trade around and share a room again, I decided to not do that. I decided to build my own bedroom... so with help I bought a tent and built a platform for it out of lumber we have from the farm here, and voila! Now I sleep in a tent. It has some great improvements: I ran an extension cord out so that I have light, I built a stove (with lots of help from Dad), and there are many cool things like that around... 


I have also been working on collecting the herbs I want to have next winter. So far I have a pound or two of Horsetail, and a few bunches of Stinging Nettle.

Stock image from Google

Horsetail grows in moist areas, like ditches etc. I got mine from the logging landing that has a spring near it, in our woods. My brother and his friend helped collect it and the nettles. 

Stock image of a stinging nettle from Google

The boys were really helpful with the nettles; while I gingerly snipped and carried, they whacked and toted. :-) The nettles really do sting, but only if you touch the bottoms of the leaves or the stem, generally. I got stung and I think the boys did too, but we got a whole bunch of the stalks for putting in teas or hair treatments. 

The nettles like moist areas too, and I have seen a lot in ditches, but while the horsetail does well in almost-mud, the nettles seem to like perpetually moist soil, in the shade, instead.

That is not even close to my whole list. The list looks more like this:

Herbs I want to gather/grow this year:

Nettle

Horsetail

St. John's Wort

Peppermint

Sage

Parsley

Rosemary

Thyme

Blackberry leaf

Dandelion, root and leaf

Chamomile

Rose hips

Elderberry

and more as I find them...

Some of these are on the list because I want to try to make this:

What have you been up to?