The green world returns! And it has been a very wet beginning, with so much welcoming rain that everything is growing quickly and abundantly. Our days are alternating between hot and sticky summer-like days, to cool early-spring days and evenings, low in humidity. I have been wandering on the property and have found Chickweed, Cleavers, Pipsissewa, Violets, Sweet Cicely, Jewelweed, Cinquefoil, Plantain, Dandelion, Wood Sorrell, Crossvine, Honeysuckle, Wild Lettuce, Poke and Greenbrier all growing wildly around me. I look forward to every walk to see what’s next to come up. Frequent backpacking trips in the backcountry have put me into places of herbal heaven, with “medicine patches” as far as the eye can see. Trailsides are bursting with Nettles, Black Cohosh, Blue Cohosh, Bloodroot and hundreds of the native wildflowers found in the area. I have only located one small area of our local Ginseng (see photo above), which is something so valuable and overharvested, that its hiding place is a secret between only us. Plants are not the only thing to start showing up, as I found out when a copperhead slithered past me recently. We respect our own space, the snake and I, and have thus far found our own places of harmony on this property.
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