Spring Greens!

My friend, Diana, suggested I take a spring tonic, making a smoothie from wild greens, water, and fruit. This is really outside my usual world but my body responded with a clear "yes!" Which is how I found myself, with said friend, protected by long sleeves and leather gloves, harvesting the young shoots of stinging nettles.  

The day was fresh, the new grass springing up so green, trees breaking out in that wrinkled tenderness of first leaves. I was having a fine time until one of those stinging nettle leaves - I swear it! - jumped off the stem and made a dive into the top of my glove. One leaf. I scrambled to remove it and then stood still, seized with the distress of those stinging welts beginning. "What do I do!", I heard my own cry. My friend David knows how to find Yellow Dock, a plant antidote he says always grows nearby. But he and his plant-savviness were hundreds of miles away. Diana seized a handful of couch grass. "Here, chew this and stick it on. I'll look for something..."  

I obediently stuffed the grass in my mouth, feeling like a horse, and began to chomp thinking "I can't believe I'm doing this! Is this what comes from hanging out with horses?"  To my surprise it almost tasted good - spring greens! - and once I smeared the masticated green mass on my screeching skin there was instant peace in the land of nerve endings. And the nettle smoothie? Delicious!

It's an invitation, isn't it? Step outside the box of habitual thinking. Where is that invitation coming in your life? Did you say "Yes!" yet?