Top left: Wild Asparagus / Top Right: Beach Side Rosemary / Bottom Left: Wild Oregano / Bottom Right: Meadow Fennel

Apart from going for short strolls in the near by meadow, doing my food shopping and riding my bike along the beach, I haven't really been getting out enough in nature. Actually the weather has been particularly cold and wet this year and alongside my steemit addiction and all the activities that have developed around it, I've been spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of the computer and its been getting less and less productive. I start to feel sleepy as I'm about to type anything and all the the posts I wanted to write about before that I never got round to, I can't fulfill except my food posts, because eating, well its my life! But i'm at my best when I stop thinking about food, when I'm active either in a hobby or activity and especially enjoying the natural world.

Morning Glory growing everywhere right now

The flora and fauna along the coast is very beautiful this time of year, so many beautiful flowers, many I have no idea what they are, i've tried to look up blogs that have Spanish wild flowers but they only show a few species, I really need a book on it but if anyone recognizes some of them, please comment! Morning glory I recognize very easily, although morning glory can be used for medicinal purposes, it does come with some side effects, including being a powerful hallucinogenic, so I won't be picking it today. I also saw morning glory on the menu when I was in Cambodia, not sure if it was the leaves or which part of the plant was being served as food but was warned against eating it, because the hear say goes it was being grown or picked around sewage spots! To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case and it's an important point to consider when foraging for yourself, is where your picking potentially contaminated by run of from agriculture for instance, or any other types of pollutants?

wild flowers, no idea what they are called, do you?

I've been eyeing up these flowers as I've been riding the train, I've not seen them anywhere except growing along side the train tracks as you can see here. It was my birthday a few days ago so I snipped a couple of these for my room, I wanted to wake up to the bright fuchsia color flowers, they really own the space as they are quite tall and magnificent!

Meadow Fennel everywhere!

These are also growing abundantly along the rocks and by the train line, even in the meadow behind where I live. The aroma is fresh and appealing but i'm not a big fan of licorice flavored stuff, so i'm just using the bunch i picked for more just having a fresh scent in the room. I don't mind eating the actual fennel bulb because I don't taste the licorice flavor as strong that way. I'm not sure if I should start digging up the ground to take the bulb, I haven't the heart to do it, seeing the fresh soft leaves is so delightful!

Beach Side Rosemary

The beach closest to where I live has lots of natural rocks and they are covered in rosemary, some of the bushes of rosemary had lots of yellow patches on the leaves but otherwise were growing quite happily there exposed to the wind and sea air. Despite having been around these rocks quite a few times, I never noticed if the bushes were rosemary but when I had my foraging glasses on, It suddenly became pretty obvious, I grabbed a couple of hand fulls from the greenest bushes that were around.

Poppy... opium poppy?

I'm pretty sure these are the opium version, because of the coloration and the time of year they have popped out....
Poppys are cultivated on a large scale for the seeds but also for the pharmaceutical industry to produce opium and processed drugs like codeine and oxycodone. God bless this flower! Even tho I don't take pharmaceutical drugs these days unless absolutely necessary, I did have a blood infection once, that left me in hospital, I was in agony and needed surgery, I was given Morphine (biosynthesized from the opium poppy) and when I left hospital I was given a big bag of drugs which included codeine, to help with pain and wean me off my dependency on morphine. The nurse told me when I was admitted to hospital I almost could of died, oh gosh, that was one of the scariest moments of my life but I didn't matter one tiny bit once that drip of Morphine went in and for the best! But do I want to be addicted to this drug every day and not care about anything, not really, so I will be leaving this beautiful poppy alone for now.

Wild flower / weed : species unknown

I had to get a snap of this little beauty, it looks like some kind of alien plant, again something I've never seen before and no idea what it is. So many new plants i'd discovered growing not far from where I live including herbs growing abundantly, i'd had enough for one day with rosemary and fennel clumps in my hand, it was time to rest well before my big excursion tomorrow.

A rare day when the sea is at its most inviting.

💚Part 2 of my foraging excursion continues tomorrow💚

I hope this inspires you to take pictures of the natural environment around you and look for plants that might be useful to you, I may even start a contest for this, would you be interested to participate?

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For more health and diet tips, check out @celestialcow....

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All images are created by @celestialcow

Thanks for reading