the grosebeak is in the background.
Mama hummingbird is now feeding her babies, they
hatched a day or 2 ago. Her nest is a little too high
up for seeing down into it. Her babies are well below
the edge of the nest still. So cute to see her fly up to
the nest & poke her beak down into it to feed babies.
The hummingbird feeder is so busy with them this
year I have to refil it daily. I've seen 6 at time out
there.
As we were talking about in our latest herb class,
the dandelion leaves are huge this year. I encouraged
all my students to start picking & drying lots of wild
spring herbs. I grind up a mountain of dried herbs in the fall & put them in an amber wide mouth jar & use a little bit in my shake every morning.
Great time of year to be picking plenty of wild nourishing herbs for infusions.
I have been drying lots of nettles (about 20 lbs), dandelion leaves, cleavers (I usually pull up lots of it before it gets those tiny sticky green burs on them), yarrow, a few comfrey leaves.
Comfrey is in bloom now, with lots of bees on it. I am harvesting some of the big stems before they fall over. Its great to see a few more bees outside now, apparently about 90% of the bees in our area died off.
The foxgloves are in bloom too, one of my favorite flowers, not to be used as an herb, but can be used as a vibrational essences.And the valerian is in bloom, I bring lots of these flowers in the house, they smell incredible, which is amazing, since the root (which is used medicinally) smells so strong I store it in glass jars.
