Virtual Plant Walk part 3: Calendula, Fennel, Marigold, Marijuana

Hey ya'll, so after that 'fork' thing that happened, I took a little break.

I wasn't sure what was happening, and I kept being told I couldn't post because of bandwidth.

I often take breaks cause I live in my camper and my computer battery dies, and well, I can't charge it on my solar. Total logistic situation.

But, this past week I have been at an artist residency in Virginia, back near my home town, and I have all the modern amenities. Actually, it is quite nice where I am staying. I've had to adjust to a new sleep time, an urban environment, humidity, and a dog that needs me a lot, cause I'm also dog-sitting.

I edited some photos I took last month in Oregon in my friends' garden and I thought I'd throw a few in a plant walk post cause they are so beautiful. Some of them were shot with a macro lens my friend who also has a Canon DSLR let me borrow for a few hours, at sunset, the golden hour.

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Calendula. Calendula officinalis (Asteraceae)

I love this plant. When I gardened, I grew tons of it. When I first started studying plants hardcore, I remember getting seed at the Maine Common Ground Fair for a special medicinal variety and planting it the next year on the farm I lived and worked on. This was back in 2010. I've grown lots of varieties over the years, and some are more for cut flowers, and other for medicine. The flowers contain a resin, and that resin is incredibly healing for the skin and the gut lining. I put it in my salves when I can, and it always makes sense in gut healing tea, or in an anti-inflammatory protocol. It also smells wonderful to me. This person's gardens were mainly for cut flowers, so I am unsure if this variety is more for that purpose or not. I believe most varieties can be used medicinally either way. I'd pick and dry the flowers and then infuse them in oil dry as to not add water to oil. I don't usually tincture Calendula, but I'm sure you can. It is resinous after all and resins are very alcohol soluble.

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Fennel (I shot this one with a macro lens!)

Foeniculum vulgare (Apiaceae)

Fennel is in the Carrot family.

I grew it when I lived in North Carolina and it would come back up the next year, as a perennial. There are annual varieties that folks grow for the plumb bulb in gardens that get harvested at the end of the season. In the west, Fennel grows everywhere, especially found on the side of the road and it starts to come out and green up mid-winter when the rains are really coming down. In the Bay area of California, with it's Mediterranean climate, you see Fennel everywhere! Fennel greenery or seeds are a great digestive aid. The seeds especially. I often get stomach aches from food allergies if I accidentally contaminate myself, and chewing on Fennel seeds help. It is great too because most folks have Fennel in their spice cabinet even if they do not know anything about herbal medicine. It is used in cooking traditionally precisely because it is good for digestion, even if folks don't realize that what they are using to flavor their food is also helping. I also think increased digestion amounts to more nutrient absorption. I put this in bitters formulas! It actually comes off kind of sweet to me in bitters, and helps to round out a formula. Bitters help digestion and are often taken before a meal or after.

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Fennel

Marigold Tagetes spp. (Asteraceae)

Marigold is related to Calendula and can be used similarly. It is more know for use as a natural pesticide in garden planting. It has also bee concentrated at times into a kind of organic 'spray' for certain plants, and my dad has taken up using it switching from a chemical version (thank goodness). Folks also like to string them up in a garland and let them dry that way, hanging them above doors or windows. I did this when I gardened. Also, it makes a really great natural dye! As a 'leaf print' type dye or boiled and used for full color with proper mordanting. I could write a whole post just on that....

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Marijuana
Cannibas indica/sativa (Cannabinaceae)

Not a hard one to miss. Marijuana. It has been cultivated and revered by many different cultures for thousands of years, around the world. Humans love to worship and partake of this plant in many ways. It's most popular form is smoking the dried flowers, but some folks make/made tea with lots of fat, or in food. It has been criminalized for it's mind-altering properties, and purposefully crafted hysteria campaigns in the 'western' world have been launched over the years for so many complicated reasons it might be too much to go into here. It's association with 'outsiders' and outside thinking, as well as it's complicated economic status has made this plant a big topic of debate. It is rapidly legalizing in the United States, state by state in different ways, and soon enough it will likely be available on a mass scale. I personally feel like it will lose some of it's special quality once Monsanto gets a hold of it and the whole midwest is pot. Currently there are perhaps thousands and thousands of strains that have been human cultivated over time mixing the different species together for various 'highs,' 'flavors' or smells. It grows differently in different climates and is constantly being birthed into different strains as others die out. Humans love to cultivate this plant and when they grow it, it is often a meticulous ordeal. There's also the money, I suppose, as in the past, it's half legal status made it worth a lot of money.

Medicinally, Marijuana is fascinating. I have taken herbal medicine classes on it, studied it's biochemistry and geeked out on cannabinoids, endocannabinoids, CBD, CBG, THC, and more before it was even 'cool' to try to understand what is up with this plant. Basically, humans make their own cannabinoids, and we have receptors for them, and Marijuana can give us cannabinoids to fill those receptors. The receptors are associated with 'safety' and sometimes inflammation and nervous system/immune system balance. There are researchers that are proposing that a whole new 'body system' be named called the 'Endocannabinoid system.' I took an anatomy and physiology course once with the herbalist Tammi Sweet out of upstate New York, and her lectures on this were fascinating.

Marijuana can be very anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, pain relieving balance seizure disorders, MS, and much more. It really varies according to strain though, and can cause major anxiety for some folks. I tend to not use the plant super often, and don't feel like I need to. Others though, tend to feel like they 'need' it to feel okay. According to the research, there may be something to this if the body is not making enough endocannabinoids. The best way to take it would be in coconut oil, and eaten in small amounts. It also is great in a pain salve. Since it is the best medicine in fats, taking it in a fat is the most potent. You have to be careful though- food made with coconut oil or other fats infused with Marijuana can cause a very uncomfortable 'overdose' type experience.

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Welcome back! We missed you. Yes, the Hard Fork was a crazy time and things are only just getting back to normal now - well, just.

Love your plant walks and interesting you added cannabis as I always see this in a league of it's own. I never used to, but I certainly get anxious on it now so I haven't ingested it in years. And yes, dissolving in in oil is gonna give you an overdose, especially, hypothetically, as I heard a 'friend' did, accidentally brew lots of leaf in fuckloads of butter and add it to cookies, eat the cookie mix as she put them on a tray, and ate 3 when they came out of the oven, and then was so totally baked that she couldn't find her front door, and her friend, who did the same, needed to call an ambulance, which she stopped by massaging his knees, and then both spent the rest of the evening imagining people and voices in the room. Hypothetically speaking.

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I have accidently overdosed too.. for me it was when someone fixed me a cup of chai tea with pot butter in it.. and there was ALOT. the tea was so good, and I drank it all, and the pot butter actually gave it a nice flavor. i drank it in the evening and had an incredibly hard time getting to sleep, i would go from happy to sad to paranoid to overjoyed at lightening speed.
i think in oil is the best way- as smoking it is not the best for our lungs, but it's hard to not want to eat 3 brownies when you usually do...

@riverflows and @ofsedgeandsalt i have overdosed too in edible form! TOO easy to do.. crawling upon the earth for 2 days is very uncomfortable. i just wanted it to end. i seldom eat it now because of said experience, but i always nibble very small bites! i hear you on the lightening fast shifts in states.. not comfortable!

and also glad you're back! most of the fixes from the hardfork should be employed and hopefully smooth sailing from here ;)

crawling arpund on the earth for two.days is not very comfortable

Ahhh... it's not a pleasant experience is it! I never ate it again... ever!!

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hahaha no! hilarious though about the knee massage part. hey, whatever works!

i laughed though i have been there and totally get it 'crawling around on the earth for two days..' but i commend others who want to go there. the person who gave me the tea had a major back injury and it went out at a pot farm, to be ironically honest, where she was needing to sit all day and trim bud, and her back injury (from surfing) meant all she could do was lay down with pot butter chai and hope the pain passes... the crawling around was probably where she needed to be....

it seems like for me both times it happened (an overdose situation) it was an accident of others giving me really tasty things with pot infused in fat and me not realizing that i couldn't eat my normal amount. after all of that, i did feel 'cleansed' a couple days later..

Yeah, it it actually tasted terrible we might be more cautious and moderate...

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