Easter is here again and usually signals the real beginning of Spring in my neck of the woods. Sure, there's still snow on the ground, but there's green showing on the edges and more every day.
Now's the time for a good tonic that will put "spring" into your step and get your blood moving and detoxed from the stagnant winter doldrums. Be kind to your liver, it does one hell of a job detoxifying your system from all the crap you and the environment put into your body. So, give it a break , a boost, a helping hand or whatever, just think about how hard it has to work keeping your funky ass alive.
A good way to help out your liver is by nourishing it. This can be done in a variety of ways, from buying very expensive and questionable detox treatments to sipping a homemade tonic once a day. Now, this "tonic" should consist of fresh ingredients but that is not always possible this time of the year. So you think ahead and stock up stuff in the fall and save some for spring, how tough is that?
Okay, let's start out by just eating some fresh local greens. Real local, like out of your back yard or garden. Dandelion greens, plantain leaves, asparagus shoots, early green onions and garlic shoots, alfalfa sprouts, are just a few spring greens that are really good for you. Also, how about some wintered-over dandelion roots, salsify roots, yellowdock and burdock roots? These are the real workhorses of liver detox, just about any herbal detox program involves these roots, their deep roots provide important vitamins and minerals and they taste pretty good too.
I'll give you a few tips and recipes for invigorating teas next time, until then, Happy Trails!

Greetings , welcome to North Idaho Herbal. A blog about local herbs and their uses, entheogens, sources, wildcrafting and ethics.
For everybody else it might be Spring in a few days, you know, the Equinox and all that. Around here, ie. N. Idaho, just short of the Canadian border, it's still pretty much winter. We are getting some reasonably nice days with temps of 40 F. but the nights are still below freezing and there's about 2 feet of snow in the flats. Just last week a small storm blew in 8" of new snow and sub-zero temps for a couple of days.
So, maybe you can understand why I'm not going to deal much with planting, wild-crafting or really anything to do with the out-of-doors for awhile yet.
However, this is the time of year to check the larder, so to speak, or your cache, stash, goody-bag or whatever, to see what's left after a long and tedious winter. It's a good idea to keep track of the herbs and medicinals you've used so that you can be better prepared for the next round of winter's wonderland. Wouldn't want to caught short, now would we?
I don't know about you folks, but being an herbalist, living and working in the great outdoors is my life and being cooped up inside because of inclement weather can be a real drag after a month or two. So I use this time to process my harvested ethnobotanicals and experiment with different flavor and effect combinations of local and store-bought favorites.
In the coming weeks I'll be sharing some of these favorites and tips about use and effects with you. Feel free to comment and/or link, Thanx, Woodco.