Some nights I don’t have a lot to say. I’ve been going through a rough patch the
last few years. It seems to have gotten
a whole lot rougher in the last few months.
I hope to come out on the other side a much stronger person. I’m a slow learner, slow to process, late
bloomer, kapha, bear person, pisces. I have
been given one great gift, which is to know myself. I don’t always know what I want, that’s
true. But I know who I am.
I think this is why I love nettles so much. My first experience with nettles was as a
child. I’d heard them called “seven
minute itch”. I didn’t really know what
that meant. One day I was at a park with
my family. I seem to think it was after church because I was wearing a
dress. I don’t remember how, but I ended
up falling down, and, one leg was in a patch of nettles. My leg was burning. I was crying. After what seemed like much more than seven
minutes, my parents took me to the ER. Eventually
the sting wore off. The memory never
has.
You can imagine my shock, years later, when I saw women
harvesting nettles with their bare hands.
Rosemary was going to show us how to make her delicious nettle spanakopita recipe. She told us when you steam the nettles to make
sure you leave the lid on until they are totally done. At least ten minutes. Make sure not to peek because the sting will
be in the steam and it will sting your face.
Until then it had never occurred to me that the 7 minute itch that stung
me so harshly was the same as the nettles I read about. I have since come to love nettles. Nettle has always loved me. Melanie (Rosemary’s beautiful daughter) and
her husband Jeff were selling potted herbs.
I bought some nettles thinking I might grow them in a bed in my
yard. I never had time to do so. A few months later I chucked all the dead
herbs and other yard compost into a fenced area. Flash forward almost four years - I now I had
enough nettles in my yard to make two batches of spanakopita and then some!
Nettles to me speak of tenacity, an ability to adapt, and strength
though adversity. That’s why today when
I went to blend a tea for a friend of mine I included nettles, not just for
their vitamin content, which I discussed before, but for the spirit. This is what I mean when I say the herbs get
to know us and we get to know them.
There is a personality or spirit to each herb. We can learn about this from observing where
the herb grows, tastes and smells like.
What it looks like. There are
little hairs on the stem and the undersides of the leaves. These hairs have formic acid. That’s what
stings us. Formic acid can also be found
in bee and ant stings. But guess what
else is in them? Serotonin! Nettles are serious about happiness. This is what nettles are to me. I don’t know what they are to you.
How can you get to know an herb? There are a few ways, as mentioned above: observe it in its natural habitat, read about
the herb from several herbalists, make an infusion and drink it every day for a
week. Taste the infusion; listen to what
it tells you.
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