Kale Blossom Mango Lassis at Moberly Community Arts Centre

 Yesterday was a cold and wet Vancouver day, so the only bees out were the bravest bumble bees. This bee was drinking from this tiny snow berry blossom with incredible focus and it was shaking--almost as though shivering. I think the shape of this blossom protects the nectar from being watered down.

These nodding onions buds are just starting to open.

You can see why some varieties of this kind of lavender is called "butterfly lavender."

 So let's go into the kitchen! I demonstrated my way of making kale chips. Preheat the oven and pans to 350 degrees F. Masage kale with olive oil and salt. Turn off the oven. Put one layer of kale on the heated pans. Try not to let the leaves overlap. You will hear a slight sizzle. Put the pans in the oven for about 20 minutes or until crispy.

 I passed around the chips and then crumbled the rest to make the gomashio in The Book of Kale by Sharon Hanna. I coudn't find seaweed flakes, so my friend Lori Snyder cut some nori into strips. We served this on top of avocado on brown rice crackers. This is one of my favorite snacks.

 We used the gomashio to season naked pumpkin seed and kale blossom  pesto. The arugula is really spicy at this time of the year, so I mix it with the kale blossoms to mediate the heat.

 I hadn't used a blender to make pesto before, and had to add extra oil to make it work. I reccomend using a food processor so you can use less oil. Sometimes when you do workshops, you have to work with what's available!

 So I forgot the yogurt to make the mango smoothies, but I went with the flow and made vegan smoothies. This one is decorated with edible flowers from the Moberly Community Herb garden: calendula, borage, lavender, and cat nip.

Madame Beespeaker's Kale Blossom Lassis

For 1 big serving or 2 small servings:

1 large ripe mango

1 handful kale blossoms

3 tbs low fat yogurt

1 cup coconut water

1/2 tsp grated fresh turmeric

2 ice cubes

Garnish:

1/4 tsp freshly ground green cardamom seeds

Cut as much flesh from the mango as you can and put aside. Put the coconut water in the blender first, followed by the other ingredients. Pulse and blend until smooth. Add more yogurt or coconut water to your taste. If you want to keep this vegan, you could use coconut milk, coconut yogurt, or add more coconut water. If you want to keep the recipe more local, use dairy milk or your own nut milk instead of coconut water and substitute some of your canned or frozen peaches (if you're lucky have any left at this time of the year). Garnish with the cardamom and edible flowers. Enjoy!

 

 The little Labrador tea plant in the garden is blooming. Lori says it can be used to make a hangover remedy. I'll put that in my files!

 The shade garden at Moberly looks fantastic in the rain.

Oh poor sodden bee, hanging on to wallflowers waiting for the sun to come out. I know how you feel.

Wednesday Work Party at the Moberly Community Herb Garden

The hummingbird intervention at Moberly Community Herb Garden Continues! Yesterday Thomas and Ali helped me tidy up the garden and prepare the soil for runner beans and nasturtiums. We moved some things around and took out a few plants that were just not doing well at all, or seemed out of place. I was very grateful for their help with the jobs that required knowledge AND muscle.

 An exhuberant class from Moberly elementary planted the seeds and searched for weeds in the lawn so we could have a discussion about medicinal plants. They were very excited about the worms and bees in the gardens and they really loved the lemon balm.

After they went back to the classroom I worked some red flax seeds into the soil and gave the garden a good watering. I also gave myself a good watering when I tried to adjust the sprinkler. Note to self: turn the water off first. Doh! Also, bring a change of pants.

If you are interested in helping out at the herb garden, please drop me a line: madamebeespeaker(at)gmail(dot)com.

Snacking on Kale Blossoms

 I am happy to announce that Madame Beespeaker is diversifying her portfolio! This year I will be doing projects about hummingbird awareness and will be performing hummingbird interventions--growing plants that attract hummers to community gardens. The first planting day was this week with a class at Simon Fraser Elementary in their school plots at the Mount Pleasant Community Garden. While we planted scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums for the hummingbirds, we snacked on kale  and brussel sprout blossoms.

 

It was fun to see the look of surprise on the children's faces as they tasted a brassica flower for the first time. "It's really good! I didn't expect to like it, but it's better than broccoli! Can I have some more? What else can I eat? Can I eat this sunflower? I can't stop eating these kale flowers. I'm addicted!" The bees love them too, and we have been surrounded by bumble bees, honey bees and mason bees sipping nectar and collecting pollen as we garden. This project has been sponsored by a Vancouver Foundation Small Neighborhood Grant. Many Thanks!

 Today I tried to get some more folks hooked on kale blossoms at the community kitchen at the Moberly Community Arts Centre. Mohinder gave them a try for the first time. . . .

 The verdict? A very cheeky smile tells me she likes them too.

 We drank chai, ate kale blossoms and sweets and chatted about kale, scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums--a trifecta of healthy foods that are easy to grow in your garden. All three plants have beautiful edible flowers and the hummingbirds love the scarlet bean flowers and the nasturtiums as well. The ladies also wanted some perennials, so I bought them some Monarda didyma plants at the UBC Botanical Garden sale. I put some in the Moberly Herb Garden so we can make tea when the plants are established. Monarda is a trifecta pollinator plant. It is a food plant for some lepidoptera (including some that feed exclusively on Monarda species) as well as forage for bumble bees and hummingbirds. It is an atypical bee plant, in that it is red, which is a color bees see as black. Bumble bees also love scarlet runner beans, and they are also atypical bee plants. Scarlet runner beans, unlike common beans, need to be" tripped" by pollinators, even though they self pollinate.

 I gave tips on planting these hummingbird attractors and also taught them how to protect their garden from slugs, which was a big hit! This project is made possible by The Moberly Community Arts Centre. I look forward to more afternoons in the Moberly Community herb garden with these lovely ladies.

The Little Lamb's Ear Dress

I feel very honored to be one of the women chosen to wear a Little Green Dress made especially for me by a fabulous artist Nicole Dextras. Nicole is making 28 dresses out of local plant materials for her Little Green Dress Projekt for the Earth Art show at VanDusen Gardens. My task was to find the plants to cover the entire dress. What would I choose for materials? For the bulk of the material, I chose Wooly Lamb's Ear or Stachys Byzantin because it's soft, silvery, and seductive. Kids love it and they are amazed when I tell them it used to be used as bandages. In fact, if you get stung by a bee, crush up some plantain, bung it on a big stachys leaf and tie it round the sting.

 I am also fascinated by the wooly carder bees that have claimed my Stachys plant. They are fascinating to watch, but up until today very camera shy. In order to source enough Stachys to cover a dress I asked permission to cut some leaves from the Moberly Community Herb Gardern. The Stachys does very well by this Moroccan Sea Holly and the thread-leaf coreopsis which are both bee magnets.

 I asked friends and colleagues if they had some Lamb's Ear and then I e-mailed a local garden club called Seed to Sky and hit the jackpot!!!! Bags of it landed on my steps. People rang my doorbell and gave me leaves and two people just said I could come to their garden and help myself. Well, I was so excited! Here's some Stachys planted next to rosemary under a tree, which reminds me that Stachys is a plant that does work in partial shade. As I was cutting plants I heard a loud high-pitched whine and what did I see?

 

For the second time this summer, I witnessed a bumble bee mating frenzy. I counted four (or was it five?) males clinging to this popular queen. She ran around and around and literally climbed the walls until she shook one of the males off and flew away with rest of them still hanging on for dear life.

This is a close-up of what the flowers look like. The weird thing is that the flowers seem to only bloom a few at a time.

 The first time I noticed this plant was at the Salt Spring Yoga Centre. It has a very calming presence on their beautiful grounds. Honey bees do like it too.

 But the male carder bees are anything but calm. They defend the plant from other bees while the females sip nectar and  quietly scratch away the fluff on their leaves for their nests. The males are larger than the females, which explains why I always thought they were two different species.

 Isn't she beautiful? I think her wings are starting to degrade. I'm glad she got lots of sunshine to lay her eggs and make her nest.

So Thursday I get to wear the Little Lamb's Wool Dress to the opening and then it will be on display at the gardens for the rest of the show while it dries and disintegrates. I hope you get a chance to get up to the gardens to see Nicole's amazing work and do check out her Little Green Dress blog and her artist blog.

Moberly Tea Party

As a wrap up celebration of MOPARRC's residency at the Moberly Community Herb Garden in east Vancouver, we held a community tea party with music by the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra. We had teas Sharon Kallis made from herbs in the garden and traditional chai made by Mohinder.

Sharon has a silver tea service for these special occasions and she has made this beautiful tent out of doilies and embroidered linens.

Sharon and Jody keep the teas steeping and the cookies flowing.

Good cookies are worth waiting for!

Jody always puts together amazing tea serving outfits.

I always have to take a photo of her funky matching shoes!

The weather turned a touch cool and windy, but it was almost perfect for the occasion. Families played in the park while they drank tea and listened to the music. Some of the children had worked with David Gowman that afternoon to make rhythm sticks and they joined in a couple of the songs.

And here are those Monkeys! Not THE Monkeys--OUR Monkeys.




At my table, I showed how to make infused honeys and shared a recipe and method developed by Danielle Charles on her lovely blog called The Teacup Chronicles. For details on how to infuse honey with herbs and flowers, check out her post here. The infused honeys were very popular and accessible enough that many people said they were going to try it at home using plants from their gardens.

I also encouraged people to draw the recipes, or at least have a go at drawing some of the herbs in the garden.



Rose petal honey,

lemon verbena honey,

and lavender honey. I wanted some people to try their hand at illustrating herbal recipes. One girl did a great job and even translated the recipe into Spanish!


Of course she did a much better job than me at illustrating the recipe!


I took some people on a tour of the garden to chat about the herbs and help them identify the ones they were interested in learning about.

The echinacea is popping up in several parts of the garden.




Thanks so much to Cyndy Chwelos for creating the garden and inviting us into this residency and to Aimee Taylor who was also a part of the Cultivating Connections residency and helped create the Moberly Community Herb Garden. Thanks to all the folks who came out and participated. Happy Gardening!