harvesting the wild

Once again, we’re on vacation. This time, as in October, we’ve trekked to the Lausanne, Switzerland metropolis to visit Jonathan’s parents, after stopping for the weekend in hilly Burgundy with a couple of friends.

The golden moment of that weekend was a morning I spent with the two older kids. We headed down a country road behind the house, overlooking wide, sprawling hills of grass and bright yellow canola, just now fully flowering. The wind was sharp and lively, but the sun was benevolent, and so we set out on a hunt—for what I didn’t know, but there is always something to find in spring in the countryside.

Before long, we had discovered that the dandelions were up and beginning to bloom, and that the lilac was spreading its fragrance all around. While the children rushed down the road on bike and scooter, I stopped frequently to greet old friends: the stinging nettle, dandelion, blackberries, clover, and wild onions. Soon, with a little playacting and genuine interest, I wooed the kids as well to the hedgerow and began to remark and explain the various plants. They picked specimens of many things and plopped them in a white plastic bucket we found by the toolshed.

All the way down to the bottom of the hill, it felt like paradise. I was firmly in the middle of my calling. My own marveling, sensing, moving, teaching, were all in action and serving to enthrall the three of us. We plopped down along a row of blooming trees full of birdsong to make dandelion chains, and the siblings were still delighted. So what if, not long after, as lunchtime approached, they began to fall apart, and by the time we reached the top of the hill again, I had a tearful two-year-old on my hip? It was worth it.

Here in Switzerland, I’ve had similar moments alone in the woods (my “work” this week consists of taking a two-hour walk each morning with no-longer-tiny Siloa slung on me in the scarf). Again, I’m strangely invigorated by the presence of wild plants. I remember how I fell in love with foraging in my back yard in Kansas City last year, making smoothies with young dandelion greens and salads with violets and their greens.

There’s something so thrilling to me about the richness and diversity of nature. I can hardly believe that some of the most nutritious plants on earth just happen all by themselves, in abundance seemingly impossible to deplete. Yet, it seems so right.

Let’s take the stinging nettle, for example. While it’s a plant you sometimes pay with pain to consume, it’s utterly worth it, being rich in vitamins A, C, and K, iron, calcium, and protein. Plus, it’s been clinically proven to help out with problems of arthritis, PMS, and urinary tract infections, along with many other illnesses.* And it tastes and cooks up like slightly more aromatic spinach.

So, we’re harvesting tons of free greens this week, and cooking them up in a couple different kinds of soup. The essentials in harvesting nettles are to either use sturdy gloves or scissors and some craftiness of gesture, and to use the youngest, tenderest leaves—a good strategy is to decapitate the top four to six leaves, if you have lots of them at your disposition. Should you find yourself in the woods, tool-less, you can try this technique with your bare hands.

To rid the nettles of their sting, you can certainly boil them for a few minutes in water (conserve the water and drink it with some honey for a healthful tisane; don’t you dare waste that goodness!). Or, if you’re going raw, you can supposedly soak them overnight in water; it also might work to totally blitz them with a food processor or juicer.

Some ways you can cook with this lively weed: soup, pesto, scrambled eggs, green smoothies, and juice. A little internet search will show you how to do any of these if you feel lost.

So, my friends, I commission us all to get out to the edges of our yards, fields, and forests, and make friends with the wild. Try a free sample. Embrace the nettle… er… maybe not literally.

*For more than you ever wanted to know about nettles, visit this site.

o happy spring!

Happily, Paris has transformed into a balmy spring paradise, or close enough. Well-tuned eyes will find not only arms and legs newly liberated from weighty winter wool clothes, but puffy white and pink blooms busting joyfully out of branches and busy bees about their work.

Suddenly, since temperatures have risen and color has returned to us all, my near-daily morning trips to the little park behind the apartment with Ionaelle have become much more enjoyable than the obligation they had been these last months.

Part of this is simply that it’s my nearest source of “nature” beyond the rosemary plant clinging to life on our cramped balcony. If I focus, really focus, on the fuzz of the sage plant, or the ochre-yellow sycamore-bud casings, it’s possible to forget that cement and asphalt and metal are on every side. I remember that the Lord is such a quirky, creative maker, and that there’s goodness in everything, and this simple reminder is like blood in my veins.

The city itself is not without goodness, though, in spite of its innate grayness; we must take into consideration that it is rich with the divine comedies that are our human lives and the intricacies of their intertwinings. In fact, I honor this city as a place where people-watching is a valued activity, and quite well-practiced. It might be Paris’ strongest suit.

At the park, thankfully, I don’t have to sit back and passively watch all the time like most grown-up Parisians spend their time doing. Kids have a marvelous way of pulling adults into their worlds, but also of breaking down walls between those who care for them.

For months, Ionaelle and I have been hanging out at the park behind the house with a four-year-old stud named Hugo, and he’s just my favorite. I love how he brags about his bike and leaks personal information about his home life. I love how he exasperates his Indian nanny by wanting to stay longer, always longer. I love the way he speaks to us in funny, somewhat lispy, British-French-Kid English, the way he wants to play “catch-catch,” and counts super loud—sometimes while banging on something metal. Most of all, I love the tender hunger for love and approval that pulls beneath the surface.

One particularly springy morning last week, Hugo broke the law by picking the heads off of some daffodils. When his nanny scolded him, he told her they were for me (“la dame,” the lady, he called me). I have to admit that it warmed my heart even though it was probably just to get himself out of trouble. After all, it’s not every day a lady receives flowers from a handsome Frenchman.

A couple of days ago, we had another sweet, only-with-kids moment. Lilia, our friends’ daughter that we watch on Tuesdays, was with Ionaelle and I. She’s got a particularly innocent, almost fairy-tale quality to her. That day, as soon as we entered the park, Lilia ran to a group of three pre-teen girls from the rough local school that were hanging out on a bench. In her little magenta coat, she just stood there and watched them with delight. Each of them began to interact with her, and then with me as I walked over to join them. The same thing happened with two other groups of tough older students; I was amazed to see how they responded—baffled but flattered, I think—to her silent but close observation. It felt like her free curiosity opened a door that I was able to walk through and offer the gentle grace of Jesus that I carry in me, as well.

Oh, bless springtime! Bless it because it melts the ice. Bless it because it warms what was frozen and wakes what was dead. Bless it because it quickens activity; bless it because it awakens love. And bless the little children, because the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.

a real gem

One beautiful thing about living in a big city is that there are people everywhere, all the time. "How is this beautiful?" you might ask. While being surrounded by others all the time has its challenges, at least one never has to get bored. People are inherently interesting. None are alike. Yet, I would argue, some are more intriguing than others.

This fellow caught my fancy recently as I accompanied Eliakim to school one morning. Clearly he had carefully considered his wardrobe: pink and red elements were combined creatively, down to a red American handkerchief serving as a pocket square. At the same time, he had this feeling to him of one who is missing some marbles, or perhaps has some too many.

Naturally, I pulled out my phone and pretended to dabble on it, while in reality snapping his picture. When we got off the bus, I glanced down at the paper he was writing on, spotting wild squiggles or something of the kind, and I wondered what kind of genius he might be.

Therefore, I'm sharing him with you as if it were the sharing of a goodie, a treasure. Because that's what people are.