A Wildcrafting Ramble

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One big item on my to do list, at least in relation to the whole flower farming section of things I want (need) to get done, is to do a bit of wildcrafting for future fall floral projects.

The thing is, I really have to intentionally set aside time to gather plants from the wild for my future dried floral endeavors, and intentions are often plentiful around here but rarely followed through with due to a myriad of reasons.

I mean, today alone I had to shovel out, scrape out, and pressure wash the barn. We hauled garbage, I hand watered a bunch of stuff, helped the hubs move corral and cattle panels, helped pull t-posts, and lectured the young adult who spent the night in his jeep in my driveway last night instead of coming into the house and crashing. Darn young people and their conscientious of other's time and comfort ways! (This all happened before noon btw).

Anyway, I digress. In between watering the few things that need hand watered and that aren't on drip irrigation, I grabbed my hand pruners and took off into the back woods. The other day when I was walking back there, I spied some already dried plants that I wanted to gather, plus some shrubberies that were at just the right state for snipping some future arrangement sprigs.

As today is the first of July, I was feeling a bit festive. The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays, probably because I descend from a long line of pyromaniacs and folk who like to make things go boom. A holiday that is celebrated with colorful explosions of independence remembrance is always going to make me a bit elated.

The elation continued as I snipped my little plant friends and bundled them together. I don't even know the proper names for most of what I gathered today. The yarrow and grasses sure, but the others I will have to get out the ol field guide and double check to make sure I have them identified correctly.

Which will have to wait for later, because even though I have the intention of doing such a thing, I have a ton of other stuff to do in front of me. The strawflowers have opened their first row of petals, which means I have very little time to string the wire in the freshly cleaned barn for them to dry on, along with all the other flowers that I am growing for drying purposes.

And we all know how zucchini likes to show up when you least expect it.

Well, the jokes on the zucchini, I expect it all the time! Kinda like company at my house. I have given up trying to have a moment's peace and have instead resigned myself to the fact that my door is revolving and there will always be some sort of human activity flourishing in my vicinity.

But much like my corgi who is currently trying to slaughter a fly with her clickity clackity teethers, I will embrace the flurry that is my life and on occasion randomly wildcraft some lovely botanical bits and baubles, for this is the way. Well, at least my way.

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's only dropped into the shrubbery once iPhone.

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