wild lettuce

June’s session featured wild lettuce, which showed up just in time to soothe the sleeplessness and anxiety many of us have been experiencing in these chaotic early summer moments. Wild Lettuce, in its milkyness and bitter sweet flavor profile, reminds us of the many ways mama earth comforts and nourishes us throughout our lives. Ki is excellent medicine for chronic pain, sleeplessness, and menstrual regulation. Revolutionary naturalist hero Harriet Tubman was known to use this ubiquitous plant ally to support folks she was guiding to freedom, giving ki to women with menstrual pain and to restless babies to help them sleep through the journey. We honor her in the many ways she read and dialogued with the shifting landscape of her time, cocreating liberatory pathways for her people through intimacy with the land. 

We also tried to partner with the sheep who just moved to Canticle to close the loop and eat the plants we were transitioning out of the ground. It turns out they don’t like to be on leash - one escaped into the street and Oona had to recall their ranch skills and tackle them. They then brought them back to their pen where we delivered them freshly pulled “weeds” for them to chomp within the comfort of their confines. Since then we’ve been able to set them up with freshly fenced pasture, where they’ve been transforming the landscape into fertile grounds for new growth.