Dogfennel

Contrary to popular belief, I have not abandoned my blog.  I’ve simply found that more of my time these days is spent reading, writing papers and working on community and personal projects.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have material to blog about, I most certainly do.  For instance, the youngin’ is “individuating”, as my dear friend Cynthia likes to say.  That means my only child has moved out of the house, somewhat prematurely.  Another for instance, the mead has been racked and was a big hit at a couple gatherings.  One more, in my move toward a more abundant life, we now have a papaya, a granny smith, red banana and a fig tree planted in the yard. Albeit, a bit crowded in the space I planted, though they are in and seem happy for the moment.  Well, they aren’t ALL planted but that’s on my list of things to do today.

I still need to follow-up on my house studies.  The beach front home that had it’s porch ripped off during one of the hurricanes has been successfully moved with only a minor snag from DEP.  The cool mid-century modern SIP’s house is up and dried in with some alterations to the exterior and what else?  The permaculture garden I designed for the Seaside Neighborhood School is getting ready to break ground and hopefully in a few months, the video project I’m working on with the TDC will have come to fruition.  That’s just a sampling of the various projects underway.

All that aside, this brings me to the topic of dogfennel, or depending on your perspective, pernicious weeds.  I’m taking an Ecological Economics course which entails looking at our natural resources and their value.  I also have a rather unruly yard (by my neighbors standards) that I have been ever so carefully hand sculpting.  Really, it’s hand sculpted or plain wild, which ever your perspective.  Nothing gets ripped out unless I know what it is and if there is a higher use determined for that space.  Tying all this together, as I was making room for the fruit trees, I was determined to figure out the purpose of the dogfennel that had cropped up thereabouts.  The other plants were easy enough, gallberry-birds love the berries and bees love the flowers, goldenrod-beautiful showy flowers and can be made into a tea for seasonal allergy, sinus and colds, passion flower-edible leaves and fruits, even the devil’s vine can be eaten like asparagus when it is young.  The dogfennel was alluding me, in fact, I couldn’t even figure out what it was until the fellow that delivered our trees told us it was dogfennel and we should eradicate it immediately.  He also pointed out a volunteer baby sand myrtle that will be a nice specimen.  Who knew?

To be certain, the dogfennel is perfectly appropriate for the scale of a roadside, but entirely too large and somewhat invasive for a small yard.  I seem to have more than my fair share of it.  Doing some research on the Internet, I found out that it has a “noxious smell”, which I found amusing because I kind of like it - it smells like fennel.  I found all sorts of ways to quickly eliminate it from my garden and finally, I found what I was looking for, medicinal uses.  It’s not mentioned in Medicinal Plants of the Southern Appalachians, though one website claims it has been used for “reptile and insect bites”.  What I found beyond that was even more interesting.  It’s scientific name is Eupatorium capillifolium and it’s a member of the Aster family.  The oil from the leaves are antifungal and research is being done to understand its antimycotic properties.  Here’s what I found from one site:

New spectrum of opportunistic human mycotic infection are increasing day-to-day due to increase in number of AIDS and cancer patients. Such fungal pathogens form new combination with immunocompromised or immunosuppressed hosts…

E. cappilifolium

The leaves yielded 1 per cent oil which was fungistatic to various fungi at 1000 ppm (1.0 x 103 µl/ l) doze (Chandra et al., 1982b). They further reported that the fungitoxicity of the oil was enhanced at pH 7 and pH 9. Rao et al. (1992) observed antifungal activity in the leaf oil against Colletotrichum falcatum, Curvularia pallescens, and Periconia atro-purpurea.

One can get lost in the Internet for sure, you see where i’m going here… This is from another site about Curvularia pallescens:

Curvularia spp. are among the causative agents of phaeohyphomycosis. Wound infections, mycetoma, onychomycosis, keratitis, allergic sinusitis, cerebral abscess, cerebritis, pneumonia, allergic bronchopulmonary disease, endocarditis, dialysis-associated peritonitis, and disseminated infections may develop due to Curvularia spp. Curvularia lunata is the most commonly encountered species. Importantly, the infections may develop in patients with intact immune system. However, similar to several other fungal genera, Curvularia has recently emerged also as an opportunistic pathogen that infects immunocompromised hosts…

Now, I make no claims to be versed in biology or medicine, the point of all this is that, I believe the planet is trying to tell us something and/or heal itself and therefore us.  If we would only pay attention.  In Ecology, we know that trees like oaks and pines seem to have devised ways to ensure their survival, like masting or producing a super abundance of nuts or seeds in response to resources and nut predators.  We also know that plants like dogfennel, goldenrod, poison ivy and passion flower thrive in disturbed areas.  They are opportunists living on the edge and we are constantly trying to eradicate them.  If we look at a plant like poison ivy, often it’s anecdote, jewel weed is growing near by.  It’s all instinctual on my part, but it would be interesting to see more scientific research indicating these perceived useless plants to be exactly what we need as a species to survive.  All I know for certain is that the tree guy sells small buckets of goldenrod for $5 a piece and with all the goldenrod I relocated, I figure I saved myself several hundred dollars…and my neighbors think I’m just growing weeds over here.

I like to pretend that I know what my neighbors think but truthfully, they probably are too busy with their sprayers and lawnmowers to have time to contemplate the state of my hand sculpted yard.      

The World of EATer’s and Permies

The Labyrinth at Rose Creek 

I thought I would be posting sooner than now, though “re-entry” into reality has left me a little shell shocked and bewildered.  I was away for two weeks at a permaculture design course outside Ashville, N.C., but it wasn’t the run of the mill pc course.   For starters, we were spoiled with three ‘organilocal’ squares a day, which were shared over in depth conversations of conflict resolution, tantra, permaculture playground design for burning man and the like.  This was preceded and or followed by various earth based rituals with lots of singing, sharing and getting in touch with your inner self (looking like a fool).

  

Laying out contours w/ an A-frame and a quick permaculture design on 1/8 acre

Not to be taken lightly, this was an intensive course to say the least.  Interwoven with the required course material, including a design project and participation in a no-talent show, we were sporadically exposed to surprise actions in which we were enticed to procure a collective intelligent response.  As example, a spontaneous dance party broke out between lectures and was abruptly halted when we (the dancers) were corralled by the police (actor children and other students) and beaten with batons (paper batons).  Things got quite physical when we banded together, fell to the floor and started to chant.  The police, thoroughly engaged (and enjoying it) in their role, began to attempt to pull people (me) from the pack.  I was ultimately terrified of becoming seperated from my sisters & brethren, who had a firm clasp on my extremities to the point at which I began to wonder if this were a real direct action, would I simply be pulled apart?  Note: see Starhawk’s non-violent activism resources.

Jack’s restored 67 VW

There were herb walks, where I learned how to identify water hemlock - ‘veins to the cut, pain in the gut - veins to the tip, everything is hip.’  There were peaceful nights in the tent and wet soggy mornings in the tent.  There was a girl named Dragonfly, a guy named Noah who is an active member of the International Solidarity Movement, a girl that was studying to be a doctor in Cuba and the author of Radical Healing, among other inspiring souls.  I didn’t get as dirty as hoped due to the relocation of our course, but I did get to hike to the Tennessee River and take a dip.  Oh, and the mead.  If I got nothing else out of this course, I took away an intense interest in mead and mead making.

Noah & Kelly exhibit their Fire Poi talents

We were remotely located away from cell phone service and nearby towns, so we created our own “bar” at our retreat, where the organic porters, double belgian brews, ports and meads flowed.  I sampled apple-lemon cyser, hyssop-anise metheglin, apricot-cinnamon melomel and various other home made meads.  I witnessed a small (30-40 gallons) homebrew mead operation, a mead making demonstration at the no-talent show and various wild yeasters sporting their wares.  Within two days of arriving home, I had a gallon of Joe’s Ancient Orange mead bubbling away on the counter and another gallon in the makings.

Mead at AVI

I got to hang with the female permaculture heavy weights for two weeks, Starhawk, Penny Livingston-Stark and Patricia Allison.  I forewent the day trip (our one day off) to Earthaven Ecovillage to catch up on some much needed relaxation.  Ah, another time I’ll make the trip to see how they have assembled their little village.  I’m back home now, immersed in courses and design work.  Back to 90 + degree days and the land of the flatwoods.  Got mead?