Welcome spring!
The birds are busy creating their nests and finding mates.
Buds on the trees are beginning to burst open with a bright elixir of color.
New plants are pushing through the Earth welcoming us with their presence every day.
It’s such a busy time of year filled with new energy and vitality all around.
As humans we often have spent the past several months resting and shifting to an inward energy in our version of hibernation. You may have snuggled up to a warm fire, or read a book by candlelight wrapped in a soft comfy fuzzy blanket. Winter calls out for the need for warmth, rest, and deep regeneration.
You probably ate some delicious meals with many root vegetables, winter squashes and grains, just like you might have packed on a few extra pounds from the additional warm sweets and treats you might have consumed, combined with a little less activity due to hiding from the harsher cold weather and frosty wind. It’s a normal process that you’re body actually prefers when you follow the cycles of the seasons.
When spring comes around the body can feel a little extra heavy and tired though. Not just from any extra pounds from winters natural slumber, but the heavier meals consumed, sweeter tastes enjoyed, and hopefully extra hours of rest you received. As the cycle of the seasons turns to spring our bodies naturally begin to shift and wake up, just as the plant and animal world around us does as well.
Life is a cycle of constant ebbing and flowing, growing and transitioning. Our lives are just as intertwined with those cycles as every other species on this bountiful planet. Humans just don’t tend to always observe the changes and over time, our ability to follow those cycles lose the ability to automatically be fully embraced by us, but the magic, need, and knowledge is still deep with you. When you listen to the magic of the seasons it does so many wonders for every part of your spirit and being and stirs within you a deep bliss filled awe you may not even realize could exist.
When you listen to the magic of the seasons it does so many wonders for every part of your spirit and being and stirs within you a deep bliss filled awe you may not even realize could exist.
To help you gently glide out of hibernation and gently get the body moving again you have an abundant gift that resides amongst you on this planet known as the spring greens.
There are certain plants that come out in the spring that provide a specific purpose in the body helping to provide a gentle detoxification. Not the strong purgative cleansing you might have in your mind that sometimes gets praised in the natural health world. Rather, a gentle restorative cleanse that can bring your body back to balance, helping to improve digestion and helping to awaken the liver and lighten its load after the consumption of the many heavier meals of winter.
This gentle restoration helps lighten the body and stir a natural wake up to your being creating a freer quality to your body to move around with more ease, as if a heavy weight is lifted off of you.
So What are These Spring Greens?
Spring greens refer to the plants that burst forth in early spring and are often plants that are high in minerals while also often having a bitter taste to them which helps turn on digestion in the body. These greens are ones you know of such as spinach and kale, but more importantly, wild spring greens that grow abundantly around you as the first greens to arrive after winters thaw.
Compared to culinary greens, wild spring greens have an extra boost in minerals and support the digestive and elimination organs in the body on a deeper level helping the kidneys, liver, blood, bladder, skin, and the immune system. By lightening and shifting any excess burden or load those organs and body processes carry, those functions and organs are able to work better at the job they are meant to do.
Some common wild spring greens include:
- Nettles
- Chickweed
- Mustard Greens
- Violet leaf
- Dandelion greens and root
- Burdock root
- Lamb’s Quarters
- Ramps (note these are at risk and only should be harvested if there is a very large patch. If harvesting them only one leaf should be harvested; never the whole plant otherwise it won’t regrow).
- Fiddleheads (like ramps, be careful to not overharvest and only wildcraft in areas of abundance).
All of the above plants, except for ramps and fiddleheads, can be harvested pretty abundantly as they tend to be prolific and often considered invasive plants. Each one possesses it’s own amazing medicinal benefits, but they all are very nutrient dense food that deeply help to restore the body and gently improve elimination, digestion, and the immune system.
Eating plants in season is a deep way of connecting to the natural rhythm of the Earth that surrounds you. Seasonal eating helps ease the transition within your mind and body from one season to the next.
Eating plants in season is a deep way of connecting to the natural rhythm of the Earth that surrounds you. Seasonal eating helps ease the transition within your mind and body from one season to the next.
So the next time you go for a walk or hike in the woods, be on the lookout for the plants coming up, and if your positive on how to identify them, think about adding them to your next meal.
Wild greens can often be cooked and used like regular culinary greens and they all can be added to a salad, sautéed up as a side dish, or my personal favorite, combining them with scrambled eggs or as a quiche. Here is a blog post on the benefits of Nettles and it includes a recipe for the Sautéed Nettles above.
Enjoy the moments of newness and growth the spring season brings!
