The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

After so many barren months, it is such a treat to be able to eat fresh food from the ground! I've been pulling dandelion leaves (aiming to leave enough to enable flowering = bee food) and putting them in salads or just nibbling on them this whole past week, as well as 'twisted stalk,' a wild perennial with a cucumber taste that produces 'watermelon berries' in the late summer (very juicy, not very sweet, succulent berries, slightly reminiscent of watermelon, continuing the cucurbit-mimic theme).  Little update: I've just seen our first flowering dandelion (there have been others around town, but this is the first at our place - right outside the outhouse!)

And what about the nettles? This time last year, nettles were literally my staple food. I ate steamed nettles and not a whole lot else for that whole month or so of peak nettle time. 'This time this year,' I've been eating them raw. I made a nettle-cilantro pesto that is pretty good, and for lunch today I had some spinach/avocado/spirulina and several whole stalks of raw nettles! If you handle them with care, you needn't get stung whilst eating them. I broke off each leaf and rolled it up carefully - rubbing the stingy spines out of harm's way. Of course, there were a few times that I wasn't careful enough, and I have a few stung spots in my mouth now.

All the trees are budding out, the ocean is calm and ferocious by turns, the mountains across the bay are ponderously black and white, reflecting sunlight on their north-facing slopes. 

Up For This Week

This week, with no mercury removal to do, I'm hoping to get outside more. I'm also really looking for answers to the question of how to change longstanding, entrenched, self-destructive habits. Part of the depression stems from the self-destructive behaviors, but a larger part of it comes from the sense of being helpless to change, incapable of improving, incorrigibility. If I could believe that I can change for the better, that would be a beginning worth reaching for.

Some little inklings: the naturopath pointing out that the very fact that I'm seeing him is indicative of self-care. And my wonderful friend Stacy called, and during our phone conversation, she pointed out that a thought is just a thought: you don't have to act on it, you don't have to judge yourself for it, you don't have to believe that it makes you a bad or incorrigible person just because it came to mind. That was so helpful, I feel that it's a good thing to share.

Last week I started a new recipe 'theme and variation' series in here, and I'm looking forward to continuing it this week. I also finally got a 'wordstalk' in: will aim to do so again this week.