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20 Edible and Medicinal Plants & Fungi to Forage in Spring

1. Dandelion: The quintessential spring foraging plant, with edible and medicinal flowers, leaves, and roots. Make dandelion salve from the flowers, pesto or a salad with the leaves, and dandelion root coffee with the roots. 50+ Dandelion Recipes: https://www.growforagecookferment.com/dandelion-recipes/

2. Chickweed: A tasty edible green that dies back once the weather gets too warm, so pick it while you can! It's great in salads or pesto, and medicinally is soothing and cooling to the skin thanks to it's saponins.

3. Miner's Lettuce: A delicious salad green that grows wild in the western United States.

4. Wild Violet: Both flowers and leaves are edible and medicinal! They're often one of the first flowers in spring and make a delicious violet jelly or syrup or can be made into soothing wild violet soap or violet leaf balm. Violet Leaf Balm Recipe: https://thenerdyfarmwife.com/violet-leaf-balm-good-for-eczema-fibrocystic-breasts/

5. Clover: Red clover and white clover blossoms are both sweet and edible. Red clover especially is packed with vitamins and minerals! They both make a delicious tea, white clover iced tea recipe here: https://www.growforagecookferment.com/white-clover-iced-tea/

6. Fiddlehead Ferns: Fiddleheads are just fern leaves before they unravel, available only for a few weeks in spring. Ostrich fern is the most popular and tasty, similar in flavor to asparagus. Some fern varieties are toxic! *Make sure you have a good guidebook and always positively identify before harvesting!

7. Ramps: Also known as wild leeks. They have a strong onion flavor and can be used in place of onions or garlic. It's *important* to remember that ramps are becoming threatened in many areas. Consider your foraging spot and ALWAYS cut ramp leaves, leaving the bulb in the ground to regrow.

8. Cattail Shoots & Pollen: Every part of cattails can be used in some way, but the young spring shoots are the tastiest. They kind of taste like cucumber and can be eaten raw. The yellow pollen that covers the flower spike in spring and summer can be used as a foraged flour substitute.

9. Wild Asparagus: Notoriously difficult to spot, wild asparagus grows in patches throughout the US and Canada and tastes just like regular garden asparagus.

10. Stinging Nettle: *Bring a pair of gloves for harvesting! Don't touch it with bare skin!* Nettle is a superfood, packed with vitamins and minerals. Cooking it gets rid of the sting. Nettles are also medicinal, commonly used for kidney and bladder problems and as a tonic for women's reproductive health. Stinging Nettle-ade Recipe: https://www.growforagecookferment.com/stinging-nettle-ade-recipe/

11. Dead Nettle: Purple dead nettle is the most common variety and is often found in backyards, fields, parks, and gardens. It's delicious in a salad or pesto!

12. Henbit: In the same family as purple dead nettle and very similar looking. This is another yummy green for salads or a wild pesto. Chickens also love henbit, hence the name!

13. Garlic Mustard: Sometimes considered invasive, garlic mustard has a strong garlicky flavor that goes great in soups, salads, stir fries, tacos, and many other dishes. Since it's such a prolific plant you can usually pick lots of it without worry of over-harvesting.

14. Willow: Willow trees are highly medicinal trees and powerful pain relievers. All willows contain salicylic acid, the precursor to aspirin. It's bitter, but chewing some of the inner bark, drying it for a tea, or turning it into a decoction/tincture works well for pain relief and early spring is the best time to harvest.

15. Yarrow: A highly medicinal plant with white flowers and frilly leaves that make it easy to identify. It's bitter, but works in treating fevers and coughs, to help stop bleeding, and heal minor scrapes and bug bites. Yarrow is also great for skincare since it's soothing to the skin.

16. Plantain: Both edible and medicinal, with two main varieties, broadleaf plantain and narrowleaf plantain which are both beneficial. The young leaves can be eaten raw and are very nutritious. Older leaves are good in recipes like soups. Chewing some plantain leaf and putting it on a bug bite, bee sting, or minor wound will help with healing and to stop itching.

17. Cleavers: Many of us know cleavers as a garden weed that sticks to everything, but it's also medicinal! Cleavers are a highly nutritious food and also healthy for the lymphatic system. Blanching will get rid of the sticky hairs, here's some recipe ideas for cleavers: http://www.myhealthyhomemadelife.com/spring-foraging-5-ways-use-cleavers/

18. Morel Mushrooms: Some of the best (and most elusive) mushrooms to forage in spring. Morels should be cooked before eating and can be used like any other mushroom in recipes, they're delicious simply sauteed with a little butter too. *Always use a mushroom guidebook when mushroom hunting and ensure positive identification before consuming!

19. Oyster Mushrooms: Relatively easy to identify since they only grow on trees and stumps, oyster mushrooms are one of the tastiest wild mushrooms around. *Always use a mushroom guidebook when mushroom hunting and ensure positive identification before consuming!

20. King Bolete Mushrooms (Porcini): Considered a delicacy because they're so yummy, king boletes are often found on the forest floor growing under conifer trees. *Always use a mushroom guidebook when mushroom hunting and ensure positive identification before consuming!

Keep Reading: https://www.growforagecookferment.com/what-to-forage-in-spring/

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A little excerpt from my new foraging zine that a lot of people seem to be resonating with. My favorite part of any foraging book is always getting to talk about why I find the practice so meaningful 🌸💕

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Tag yourself!

{made with the Ancestors and Great Spirits of the African Diaspora in mind, here's what I associate with each day of the week and the children of the diaspora born therein:

Monday's child is fair of face

Tuesday's child is full of grace

Wednesday's child is full of woe

Thursday's child has far to go

Friday's child is loving and giving

Saturday's child works hard for a living

And the child born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

Monday: masters of finding new roads and moving forwards, tearing down blockages, trailblazers and warriors. Artists of all kinds, writers, poets, singers.

Tuesday: embodiment of thunderstorms, winds, omens, they're powerful conjurers with hot hands, always busy, always moving. Often times scholars, historians.

Wednesday: defenders, protectors, of humanity and nature as a whole. Warrior spirits at their core, but also great diviners and mediums.

Thursday: eloquent muses of the arts of love and war alike, great beauties who lead armies with equal charm and force. Sweetening, love and luck workings come easy to them.

Friday: personification of abundance and status. A commanding presence. Building legacy, great manifestors and conjurers, specially for work and finances.

Saturday: guardians of waters and the beyond. Community leaders, gifted healers, divine messengers. Carrying all the wisdom of the Elders and Ancestors.

Sunday: priests and priestesses that defy status quo, very old Ancestors coming back to reshape and rebirth reality. They will enter your life and purge every aspect of it.}

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I also want to point out, if you’re a latine out of Latin america, seeking reconnection to your roots, or even if you’re still here but want to deepen ties to your ancestors, culture, etc. Brujería is a cultural practice, and it isn’t the only one. Culture can be folk magic, but it can also be playing instruments, dancing, writing, singing, stories and myths, and much more. If you want to reconnect, brujería isn’t the only route and it definitely shouldn’t be the only path you take to get closer to your folks. You should be walking all these at the same time, at different levels sure, because maybe history interests you more than music, or you have a gift for singing and not dancing, but you should be aware and connected to it all, not just the magic.

Because then you aren’t in for reconnecting, you’re in for “oo shiny that makes me different and gives me power” and that’s not reconnection. That’s ego.

Reconnecting involves community and Elders. Eventually, and through the elders in your community, you’ll find out what role you’re meant to fulfill in your community. We all have one. The Healer and the Witch are just as important as the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Musician, the Storyteller, the Historian, the Scientist, etc. Maybe you have more than one gift. Maybe none of those gifts has to do with magic. Maybe your gift isn’t conjuring spirits, but it’s playing violin, or piano, or dancing, or writing, or practicing the law and defending the innocent, or tending the land and protecting ancestral agriculture techniques, every gift isn’t about witchcraft and it doesn’t have to be magic to be magical.

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Hoodoo, Rootwork and Conjure sources by Black Authors

Because you should only ever be learning your ancestral ways from kinfolk. Here's a compilation of some books, videos and podcast episodes I recommend reading and listening to, on customs, traditions, folk tales, songs, spirits and history. As always, use your own critical thinking and spiritual discernment when approaching these sources as with any others.

Hoodoo in America by Zora Neale Hurston (1931)

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (1936)

Tell my horse by Zora Neale Hurston (1938)

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African American Anthology by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, editors (2003)

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau (2006)

African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem (2007)

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell (2011)

Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald (2012)

Rootwork: Using the Folk Magick of Black America for Love, Money and Success by Tayannah Lee McQuillar (2012)

Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women by LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant (2014)

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years Of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee (2017)

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston (2018)

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals by Luisa Teish (2021)

African American Herbalism: A Practical Guide to Healing Plants and Folk Traditions by Lucretia VanDyke (2022)

These are just some suggestions but there's many many more!! This is by no means a complete list.

I recommend to avoid authors who downplay the importance of black history or straight out deny how blackness is central to hoodoo. The magic, power and ashé is in the culture and bloodline. You can't separate it from the people. I also recommend avoiding or at the very least taking with a huge grain of salt authors with ties to known appropriators and marketeers, and anyone who propagates revisionist history or rather denies historical facts and spreads harmful conspiracy theories. Sadly, that includes some black authors, particularly those who learnt from, and even praise, white appropriators undermining hoodoo and other african and african diasporic traditions. Be careful who you get your information from. Keeping things traditional means honoring real history and truth.

Let me also give you a last but very important reminder: the best teachings you'll ever get are going to come from the mouths of your own blood. Not a book or anything on the internet. They may choose to put certain people and things in your path to help you or point you in the right direction, but each lineage is different and you have to honor your own. Talk to your family members, to the Elders in your community, learn your genealogy, divine before moving forwards, talk to your dead, acknowledge your people and they'll acknowledge you and guide you to where you need to be.

May this be of service and may your ancestors and spirits bless you and yours 🕯️💀

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There's levels to ancestral connection, and you shouldn't skip any of them.

Take this as your reminder to first of all, spend time with your spirits, without expecting anything in return. Heavy on that last part. You don't make and maintain a genuine connection with someone just by showing up to their doorstep every time you need something from them. Treat them as people because they are. Your people. You should care for them as much as they care for you.

Be it ancestors (specifically direct blood lineage or adoptive family, any deceased human relative) or ancestral spirits (in general, that is, all ancestral allies and hereditary connections not just your ancestors). Just make time to hang out. Walk up to their space, a cup of your favorite drink in hand, give them their preferred drink and just chat. Don't ask anything in return. If you have an altar for them, do that. But it can be just going to visit their graves and giving libations and flowers, and telling them how your life's going, sharing memories together, remembrance, or just to listen. It can also be going to the beach or a river, and same thing, pour a drink and talk to them, and listen back. It can be your plant allies, while you're watering them, or putting eggshells or honey or sugar water or other good nutrients and fertilizers on their soil. It can be visiting your ancestors in dreams, and spending time with them there. There's so many ways to do this.

The second level to this is letting them sit in your body too. Listen. Become familiar with how they make you feel. With the signs of their arrival and presence. With the signs they communicate with and what they mean to you. With how they let you know they have a message, or that they're in for a visit. And let them in. Dance to your grandma's favorite beats. Sing your grandpa's favorite songs. Make a family recipe and share a meal with them, enjoy it for them and with them.

Ancestral reverence isn't just the big rituals and they're not the most important aspect of it, it is the everyday coexistence, in your little but constant everyday ways.

Do as you do but also as they did. You're an extension of them and they're an extension of you. They not only walk with you, you carry them within you.

Honor that.

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Cristina de Middel

Elegguà arrives at the macumbas of Rio de Janeiro as EXU, and takes the shape Seu Zé Pilintra one of the icons of the Carioca soul. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 2016. "Midnight at the Crossroads".

Exu takes many different shapes, both woman and men. Here a Pomba Gira, the feminine representation of Exu in the Umbanda temples. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 2016. "Midnight at the Crossroads"

Tying strands of palm oil on your toes and pulling your feet off the floor at 12am will keep the bad luck away. Havana, Cuba. 2018. From the series "Midnight at the Crossroads".

Twins in Haiti are called Marassa and are also considered as specially blessed and providers of good luck. Jacmel, Haiti. 2018. From the series "Midnight at the Crossroads

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Daughter Of The Sea (2022) directed by Alexis C. Garcia  

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The Color Purple was published 40 years ago in 1982. It is an epistolary novel written by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film which released on February 7th, 1986 (US). 

THE COLOR PURPLE (1985) dir. Steven Spielberg

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this tree was so pretty i started sobbing

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the world is a better place with beans in it. I hope they know that

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🖤 black cottagecore 🌱

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Nina Simone 1960s

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