Ode to Stinging Nettles

by Mimi Hedl

It’s the 5^th of June, another rainy spring early morning. All the windows and doors are closed. Too wet to go out to the gardens. Feels chilly in the house so I made a pot of lemon balm tea to soothe my weary mind. Gregorian chants play on Columbia’s free form radio station, another calming remedy in these uncertain times. The weather mimics this moment in history. In forty three years I do not remember such a rainy spring. Yesterday we had a deluge. “The sky is crying” I say to myself, as I hear Gary B. B. Coleman belt out a bluesy song. In trying moments I go to primitive emotions, superstitions and see omens where none probably exist. Sometimes we feel lost. This morning I remembered my history with stinging nettles.

For some unknown reason, stinging nettle seedlings have appeared in all our container planters, in the garden beds, in the compost, in the plots with native grasses and forbs. I longed to find stinging nettles last year when I had some strange reaction to heaven knows what in late summer. What little I could find had gone to seed, no leaves available to make tea. (Did you know that nettles have a natural antihistamine? I didn’t either when we first came here to build Strawdog.)

Six years after we’d built our house, the woodshed and barn, I drew up a rough sketch of the quarter acre piece of earth that would become The Park. This Park would be an homage to all the plants I loved, organized by their uses. Because this project would sit far from the hydrant, it would be impossible to water so we had to create a humus-rich soil that could support plant life without additional water.

We soon discovered that many folks had barns filled with old straw and hay. They were only too happy to get rid of the mouse and rat poop-filled material. Ron and I just had to move it out. Ron built sideboards for our International Harvester pick-up, ‘Ol Red. We’d drive to a barn early in the morning, position ‘Ol Red under the hayloft door, and begin pushing and carrying bales and dusty straw to the edge. One of us would go down below to pile the straw so we could fit more on ‘Ol Red. We’d drive home, unload the straw on the quarter acre future Park and go back for another load.

Farmers would contact us, “Would you like some old straw?” The answer was always, YES. By the second year of collecting this mulch, I started to sneeze and get stuffy. I didn’t put one and one together for a few more years when my obvious allergy to dust screamed at me. Anyone with an allergy knows how miserable you feel when you can’t stop sneezing, your eyes water, and you can’t sleep. I felt like my body was rejecting me.

So I hit my herb books. In short order I discovered stinging nettles’, urtica dioica, magical power with its natural antihistamine. I began hunting down nettles in the fields and fence rows. I’d read the ditty, ”Nettles in, dock out, dock takes the nettles out” in English herbals and knew where the dock, rumex crispus, grew, just in case. Believe me, I’ve used this remedy many a time and felt grateful to avoid the blisters I’d get from the barbs on nettles. I carefully picked leaves with gloved hands every morning to make a bitter tea I’d drink morning and evening. I cut back the nettles so I’d have leaves all spring, summer and into the autumn. After six months of this treatment, with no expectation of miracles, I no longer sneezed or felt stuffed up. (This must sound like a testimonial. Well, I guess it is, though I’d like to think of it as an ode to stinging nettles, a love song of sorts.) Needless to say, I became a believer.

Since that discovery and cure, I’ve retold my story to countless people with allergies. Everyone says it takes too much time, or they don’t have nettles growing in their yard. That stops me. I realize our richness, here on Strawdog, always rested in having time to do what we wanted. Father Hunkins, a Catholic priest who befriended us because he liked Ron’s argumentative ways, once sent parishioners to us with boxes of canned food. He thought we were poor because we didn’t have anything fancy or modern. We lived with that illusion and I continue to. People don’t realize how lucky I feel. Now with my new 2013 Honda CR-V, I feel like a fraud because it’s not broken down or rough-looking, has no mechanical issues, and makes me seem like a normal consumer. I don’t know how I’ll adjust, though it will be a relief to not walk out to the vehicle every time and wonder if she’ll start.

And that’s what people the world over want, dependability, to live their lives knowing their basic needs will be provided. As I gathered the stinging nettles from the planter to put in a potato soup, some for ravioli and calzones,  amazed at the quantity of seedlings everywhere, I realized how much I learn from native people who’ve had to deal with difficult lives and make do in any number of remarkable ways. Those are the people I celebrate, along with the humble nettles, on this chilly spring morning as the skies darken with more rain.