In a paddock down a dirt track by a river estuary stream we find nettles. I'm thrilled, as they are not as common to find here in the way they were in England. They're poisoned and eradicated in favour of native species - sensible, I guess, but I prefer the bastardised Australia, the one of gum trees and migrant plants. It seems that we have lost that tie to our ancestors who once would have subsisted on nettles as well as used them as valuable medicine.
When we first moved to England, me and my five year old son, we encountered the dangers of a British landscape in summer, which seemed far more treacherous than the Australian bush, which everyone fears for it's spiders and snakes. Perhaps it's just that you learn to negotiate your own country, stepping lightly between the threats without really thnking about them. In Somerset we tackle bees and wasps and brambles and forests of nettles that seem to tower above us.
It takes some time for my boy to learn the way of English woods and paths. How he manages to fall in them so constantly, I do not know. Perhaps it is just what little boys do to learn. Nevertheless there would be resounding, disproportionate screams and tears, kisses, and dock leaves as antidote. When my father visits from Australia in the summer for our wedding, he comes up with a far better cure - stuffing his grandson's face with blackberries so the nettle stings are soon forgotten.
Nettles, by Vernon Scannell
My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my hook and honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. Next task: I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead.
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.
He does feel sharp wounds again and again, despite my need to protect him. Eventually I teach him resilience, to dust off and brush off and deal with it - I get tougher and less sympathetic. It's just a nettle sting, after all, I say sharply. You aren't dying. Mother love can be tough and sharp as much as it is kisses on wounds. I'm struck by the duality of nettles in life and in Scannell's poem - they are dangerous and sharp, but teach us lessons too. Plants can be contrary as much as we can - they can sting and bite but they can heal too, stumbled upon when we need their medicines the most.
And I'm remembering all of this as I stand in a wintry Australian cow paddock - nettle soups, rich and buttery, sometimes flavoured with garlicky ramsons or a splash of cheap sherry, or sauteed with red onions and shaggy ink cap mushrooms, chopped into casseroles or steamed with a sprinkle of nutmeg. I take my knife and cut them into an empty yoghurt container and take them back to the van to make strong, green nettle tea we enjoy as Jamie throws a line out to hope for flathead or perch. It's good and wholesome and real, far better than storebought tea bags from plantations in India. In the evening I chop it into a tomato based sauce with fennel and olives and serve on top of polenta, which we eat as we huddle around a fire and finish off the last of the sherry.
I think about herbs and how they are not merely medicinal, but tell stories of who we are and where we've been. I take the last nettle leaf and press it between the pages of a book on edible weeds - one day, I'll open it and it will fall out, and I'll be reminded of a cow paddock en route to elsewhere where we drank nettle tea and failed to catch fish, and life was for a moment sweet and good.
@naturalmedicine II Discord Invite II #naturalmedicine
