Europe food nature

a return to connecting with wild plants

March 29, 2020

While we’re staying in one place for the next few (or more) weeks, I’ve been revisiting some of the OUTSIDER pieces previously behind a paywall. For the past five years-or-so I’ve been working with the mint plant, and this is a connection that continues to deepen even when I can’t find any to forage in the wild (like just now). But of course this is the beauty of plants, when one recedes into the background, another steps forward, and nettle has been calling me in dreams, and is being digested a lot in teas and soups just now.

Below are links to two pieces written last year when the connection with wild river mint felt so beautifully all-encompassing and ubiquitous. I’d also recommend the book Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal for a really comprehensive approach to wild foraging.

The photo above is of a mint planted gifted by a friend nearly three years ago now. She manages quite well in the van kitchen as long as I remember to move her onto to the dashboard each time we stop somewhere new so that she can bathe in sunlight.

Wild mint foraging: We’ve parked by the Dordogne river in France for a few days and are surrounded by wild river mint. It’s as pervasive in this spot as nettles are back in Cymru, threading throughout the long grasses and bursting with scent when bruised underfoot.

Journeying with wild mint: I wanted to keep you with me on this journeying with plants that’s occurring so organically it feels as if I have always worked this way.

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