Edible Wilds

My Dad is a very wise man. When I was a little girl, my parents used to take our family on annual camping trips. We lived in the city, so they wanted to expose us to nature and just spend some quality time with us kids. We used to camp in Gatineau, Algonquin, New Brunswick, and even Virginia Beach!

My brothers were far more interested in fishing and catching frogs and snakes than they were in identifying the different flora and fauna. Dad taught the boys how to fish, but he took me on a walking tour through the woods and showed me all sorts of wonderful edible plants! My Dad once told me "if you're out in the wilderness you will never starve". He's right! If you are stuck in the wild and you know what to look for, you will not go hungry.

When I was in the bush moving the cattle with Hubby yesterday, I thought of my childhood camping trips and my walks with Dad. I am really thankful for the times that Dad took me on those walks and taught me about edible wilds. On our property, Hubby's got a few hundred acres of forest.

In our forest, I've seen:
*Fiddle heads
*Mushrooms
*Mint
*Raspberries
*Strawberries
*Hawberries
*Leeks
*ASA from poplar bark (medicinal)
*Chamomile
*Blackberry
*Elderberry
*Dandelion
*Mustard
*Chives
*Crabapple

I know there are many more edible wilds on our property, but these are the ones I can identify. The number one rule for edibility is KNOW BEFORE YOU EAT!

Looking for edible wilds is such a fun activity. When Hubby and I have kids of our own, I'd really like to take them for walks through the bush to identify and sample some of the wonderful treasures Mother Nature has to offer us. The hiking part is fun, but finding wild raspberries is the part that is the most fun!!!

If you're ever over for a visit, we'll take a walk in the woods and look for edible wilds :)

(Cross-posted at Random Thoughts and Musings on the Island)

Green at blogging, but not green at being green.

After my slow start at blogging, here's another post.

North Americans have been slow to adopt alternative small energy. For example, solar and wind generated energy.

On our recent travel to the Dominican Republic, where hydro costs are high and many of the people are less economically advantaged, we spotted many small solar panels and windmills. It was very encouraging to see so much advertising for the use of solar and wind systems.

We saw many black tanks on the roofs of houses and condos. Basically, the water in the tanks is heated by the sun. What an ingenious idea. It's a very simple and primitive idea, yet at the same time it is something we do not practice much of in North America.

I would like to see more of us adopt small energy systems in our own daily lives. If taking the plunge with experimenting with alternative energy is too big a step for you, why not try taking baby steps? For example, try one of these solar backpacks.

Eclipse Solar Gear bags enable you to recharge your batteries with the help of solar energy. You won't have to worry about your batteries dying out on you. Just let the sun work its magic and your ipod, cell phone, digital camera, MP3, PDA, GPS, and whatever other gadget you have will get charged by the sun's energy.
Reviews for these new bags are mixed. According to some, the price is a bit hefty and charging time is long. It's still a great step in the way of using natural energy though!

I know, I suck

Hi everyone! Fancy here!

I have been an awful green blogger lately...sorry...some personal stuff has sucked all the creative juices out of me, but I'll be back and better than ever soon.

I will leave you all with a pet peeve of mine-Idling cars!!! Grrr. Okay, because we have been pummeled with snow lately, I have been telling my car idle while I clear it off, but only to run the defrost so that I actually can clear it off, and it is the only time it ever idles.

One place I notice the most idling cars is my daughter's daycare. Parent leave the cars idling while they drop their kids off or pick them up. I just don't get it. If they were in the car long enough to get to daycare it is probably already warm anyways. My car is, and I live less than a kilometer from the place! So they are idling it just to keep it warm for the 5-10 minutes that they are gone from it, failing to recognize that if it is already warm, it will rewarm really quickly. Like, the second they start it. So unnecessary. Or course, 5 minutes or so may not seem like minutes that long...but it all daycares in the city are like mine, that adds up to a heck of a carbon footprint. Kudos to my city for making idling more than 5 minutes illegal (too bad the other daycare parents haven't noticed!

Green Girly Thing

Hi everyone! Fancy here!

The first "green" change I made was 2 years ago and was probably the most hard-core, and I didn't even originally make it to be green. Men, you may want to avert your eyes. Ladies, I am talking about the one, the only, the amazing...Diva Cup.

See, I started using the Diva Cup not to be green, but because the alternatives were no longer working for me. After having my daughter, I found that tampons...umm...seemed to go south as my day went on. Not very effective, or comfortable, huh? As well, they seemed to irritate my cramps. As for pads, well, I had not used them in over a decade and had no desire to go back.

In researching this problem, I kept coming across an item I had never known existed, menstrual cups, cups made of silicone or rubber that go into the vagina to catch the menstrual flow, and then are cleaned out and re-used. Unlike many women I know, the idea did not ick me out at all. Since I had used OB applicatorless tampons for years, I was accustomed to getting close and personal with my menses. So once I read about how they work, I was eager to try it and bought a Diva Cup (the common one in Canada. The Keeper, The Lunette and The Moon Cup are others you may come across) at Noah's right away, then waited eagerly for my flow to...flow.

It was love at first use, if love for a menstrual product is possible. I will admit it took me a couple cycles to get it in right quickly and easily, but following the directions really helped, and now I have no problems at all with insertions or removal.

The things I love about the cup are that it greatly reduces my cramps, stays in place, needs to be dealt with less than a pad or tampon, is clean, is affordable (about $40, that is less than a year of tampons, and it lasts 10 years!) reduces midnight runs to the drugstore, reduces overflowing toilets once a month (whoever said tampons are flushable lied...but I refused to throw them out!) . Of course, the best thing about the sups are that they are reusable so they reduce the waste that disposable menstrual products lead to, as well as the energy used for producing and transporting and endless supply to meet an endless demand for the disposable products.

To answer a few common questions:

1. Does it hurt?

No, now at all. You don't feel it. Unlike a tampon, it sits at the lower part of your vagina, so it is in the wider area, and does not press against the cervix.

2. Is it messy?

Well, if you fling it around, it may be. But with normal usage, not at all. It sits vertically, so when you remove it it stays vertical, so you can just tip it out into the toilet with no spills or mess.

3. How do you clean it in public bathrooms?

Well, I rarely have to. Most days cleaning it right before I leave the house and first thing when I return is enough. If I do have to though, I just dump some water from a water bottle in my purse into it, swish it around, and dump the water in the toilet. Voila, clean.

4. Does it leak?

Well, like any menstrual product, you have to get a feel for what it can manage and keep and eye on it on heavy days, but I have never found leaking to be a big problem and I definately find it leaks way less than tampons. I do wear panty-liners for back up (cloth ones, but that's for another post!) just in case.

Go ahead, try it! Be a Diva Like me!! Many heath food stores or natural product stores sell them, as wel as Ebay (yes, there are new ones on Ebay!)