Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Healing

Herbs to Help You Stay Healthy This Spring

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If you imagine stepping from a freezing December day into a sweltering July day, you can only marvel at the body’s ability to adjust to new seasons. Beneath the surface, your body works hard to transition to new seasonal conditions. More than 5,000 genes change their expression from one season to the next, according to research done at Cambridge University.

The seasonal shift from winter to spring may be especially challenging. You can support your body by gently shifting your diet, rituals, and self-care for the new season. Herbs can also be powerful allies. Keep reading to learn some simple practices to help your body transition to spring and discover four herbs that may help you stay healthy this spring.

The Season of Renewal

During the spring, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners recommend simplifying food preparation. You may not be as hungry as the weather gets warmer. Take heed of nature’s cue and eat less. Steam your vegetables, and move toward eating soups with clearer broths and vegetables.

One season may change to the next in a single day on the calendar, but that’s not how your body experiences the transition. Rise slowly from your winter rest and take measures to stay warm in early  spring. Avoid doing extreme spring fasts or cleanses. Instead, replace winter food with spring foods one by one, and gradually increase your physical activity as the days lengthen.

Nature offers an amazing way to know which foods and herbs are helpful when: Eat what’s growing near you when it’s growing near you.

Spring Herbs

Traditional Chinese Medicine emphasizes keeping the liver and gallbladder healthy during the spring months to ward off seasonal allergies and digestive problems. Not coincidentally, these common spring herbs are excellent for the health of your liver and gallbladder.

Two of these herbs are wild and two are domesticated. If you’re not used to eating wild foods, it may feel strange to gather food outside. But people have eaten wild plants for thousands of years, and the human diet was once 100 percent wild. Wild foods are usually far more nutritious than cultivated ones. Just make sure you know how to identify them before picking them yourself. Find out how in this article. You can probably also find these at a health food store, farmers market, or herb supplier.

Stinging Nettle

Nettles grow all over the United States in the springtime next to rivers and streams. They’re high in protein, calcium, iron, and antioxidants. In a double-blind study, freeze-dried nettles were found to relieve seasonal allergy symptoms better than a placebo. I drink a nourishing nettle tonic a few days a week; find out how to make it here.

Dandelion

Don’t poison those sunny, yellow-headed blossoms coming up in your yard! Dandelion greens are some of the most nutritious spring foods you can eat. They’re available in the produce aisle of my local gourmet grocery store for $3.99 for a small bundle. Hopefully that makes you feel better about picking and eating them. For a complete primer on the health benefits of eating dandelion, how to pick them safely, and how to transform them into delicious dishes, check out this article.

Cilantro

You’ve likely eaten this herb in salsa or in Thai food. Some people love it; others hate it. If you love it, spring is a great time to enjoy it. It’s packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, and it helps your body excrete toxins, according to a number of studies.

Parsley

Like cilantro, parsley is high in a number of nutrients, especially vitamins A, C, and K, iron, and antioxidants. It’s a perfect aid for sluggish digestion. Chop it to add flavor and color to dishes or infuse it to make a refreshing spring tea.

Lighten Up

Spring is the time to lighten up your meals and increase activity after a long, slumbering winter. Remember, your body’s working hard to adjust to the new season. You may experience annoying symptoms. Headaches, hay fever symptoms, sinus congestion, red eyes, and other ailments are common as the seasons shift. Instead of cursing your body, support it by stepping up your self-care, getting plenty of rest, and eating with the seasons.

Editor’s note: This is a revamped version of an article originally posted on April 17, 2018.

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Lessons From the Garden

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“Can we plant the pumpkins this day?”

“Let’s go see if the peas are growing!”

“Mom, the chickens are in the garden again.”

Oh yes, those are the sounds of spring around here. It’s our fifth year growing vegetables in our backyard. It’s amazing how much easier it is than that first April, when seven months pregnant, I dragged my husband out to help me dig a garden bed in our brand-new backyard. I wish I’d heeded the wisdom of permaculturists, who recommend observing and analyzing a site for an entire year before planting a single seed … and also the wisdom of my body, which wasn’t happy about my grand gardening visions.

Those are just two of the hard-earned lessons I’ve learned from five years of gardening. Except for one summer of gardening in Colorado several years ago, my husband and I are gardening newbies. My dad planted a vegetable garden for one season when I was a kid, and it was one of the most thrilling summers of my life. I couldn’t wait to go outside every morning to see what was growing. I knew I would be a vegetable gardener someday, and during the many years my husband and I spent renting and moving around, I longed to get my hands in the soil.

I wasn’t a natural.

Those first few years, I labored over my garden plans for hours while studying Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. I’m thankful for all I’ve learned from that book, and from others. I still refer to books. But even for a word lover like me, gardening is one of those things you learn by doing. And, oh, how I’ve learned.

My first big lesson: I’m not really in charge.

Yes, I can plant at a certain time and mix the fertilizer. I can water or not water. I can fence the chickens away from the first tender sprouts. But I’m collaborating with the weather, the rain, the soil, the wildlife, bugs, insects, and bees. There’s a certain amount of surrender involved.

Over the years I’ve surrendered to stunted squash, wilted cabbage, and unripe tomatoes. To chickens shredding the lettuce, bugs eating the spinach, kids eating the cherry tomatoes.

I’ve learned to let go of perfection.

My next big lesson: gardens have healing powers.

For a couple of seasons, gardening became a chore. Work. I’d trudge out and dutifully plant the seeds and water. I’d mix my fertilizer and mindlessly sprinkle the soil with it.

I believed in growing my own food. I wanted to harvest vegetables from my back yard. But I’m not sure I loved the actual gardening part.

Last spring, overwhelmed with caring for a three-year-old and an infant, I wasn’t sure if I’d plant a garden at all.

“Maybe it’s a good year to let our plots lay fallow,” I announced in March.

But, at the end of April, I got a great deal on a bunch of starts and planted.

Then my dad died.

I spent much of June in Colorado. And when I came back, it was incredibly uplifting to see the peas twisting up their trellises and the lettuce, rainbow chard, spinach, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes crowding their beds, reaching for the sun.

I spent so many hours with those plants over the next few months, watering and weeding, watching and listening, sitting.

I was surprised a few weeks ago when I pulled out my gardening journal. Every season I meticulously record what I plant, what’s growing and what’s not, when I fertilize, etc. Last year, I didn’t jot down a single note after April 29.

And yet, I learned more from gardening than ever before.

The garden is the perfect place to grieve. Quiet, buzzing with bees, bursting with life. The plants have so much to tell us about life and death, about patience, about just being.

Now, as I embark on my fifth growing season, I feel no sense of duty. No obligation. I only feel grateful and excited.

What lessons have you learned from your garden? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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