Flourish & Flora

Yesterday was Flourish & Flora's first collaboration with ! 💚

I led a group of older explorers on a scientific expedition to search for and document plants with heart shaped leaves, while Shaun led younger explorers on a sensory filled nature play experience wild crafting with lavender. 🌿

We learned about foraging safety, botanical terms, invasive's impact on our ecosystem, a few edible and medicinal plants, and techniques for documenting plants in a nature journal. 🐸

We finished up the day with a nice picnic enjoying some sun tea, lavender lemonade, and elderflower cookies.🌞

Are you part of a local homeschool group, interested in connecting your children with nature? We would love to help plan some fun and educational activities!💚

Have you made it out to a foraging tour and picnic at the Lake Claire Community Land Trust yet? We will be kicking off the first tour and picnic of the season on March 23rd 2-4:30pm in honor of the spring equinox! In this tour, we will identify the edible and medicinal applications of 15 plants! We finish the tour with a picnic featuring several dishes and teas using herbs discussed in the tour.

Hope to see you soon! Spring is just around the corner.

The largest blackwater wetland in North America is right here in Georgia, and it is currently being threatened by mining. The impact of mining near the wetlands will cause so much destruction to a resource that is already limited furthering habitat loss and endangerment of at risk species. Please visit protectokefenokee.org to send a letter to our governor and hopefully stop this from happening!

Thank you! 💚💚💚

Come look for salamanders on March 9th 11am- 12:30pm at the Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve. No reservation necessary. Free event.

A poem for when you feel lost!
Happy September! So grateful for the cooler weather today! It even smelled like fall!! 🍂

You’re invited to a community playdate! This is an opportunity to unwind and nurture ourselves through creativity and camaraderie. A variety of sensory, open-ended activities will help us feel grounded and relaxed, giving our bodies a chance to rest and recalibrate by caring for our inner children. For us, this means holding space for pressure-free playtime, giving ourselves permission to do whatever feels fun, and enjoying the process with no expectations. Participants will be able to move freely between activities throughout the duration of the gathering. Whimsy calls.

Link in bio to register OR Venmo @𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻-𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱

🍃EARTH ART - Flowers, leaves, sticks, rocks! Mama Earth has got it covered. We’ll be playing with nature and creating a community earth altar and mandala.

🎨PAINT STATION - A glorious cornucopia of paints and painting tools awaits. Express yourself and throw color around like it’s no big deal (because it isn’t!). There is space here for joy, anger, grief, and everything in between.

🌸SCENTED PLAY DOUGH - Our homemade play dough is extra soft and scented with essential oils. Smush and mush to your heart’s content and perhaps sculpt a little something to add to our collaborative dreamscape.

✨MINI SPELL JARS - What does your inner kid need to hear? Write your message or affirmation on a tiny scroll and put it in a glass vial along with a selection of herbs and sparkly bits. A charming visual reminder of the love we have for ourselves.

🫧BUBBLES - One of life’s simplest most magical pleasures. We’re bringing back all the bubble supplies along with a few more surprises and our epic early 2000’s playlist.

See you there!

📍Lake Claire Community Land Trust
420 Arizona Ave

Thanks UGA for making this educational pamphlet on Invasive Plants!! Quite a few of these are edible and medicinal so you can harvest them and potentially help to restore balance in your local ecosystem! It's a win win!

No Mow May is an initiative to put a pause on mowing residential lawns in the month of May. The main goal of No Mow May protects and boosts the struggling populations of bees, butterflies, and other essential pollinators. By keeping your mower in storage until June, you will help local bees and butterflies thrive. https://www.flourishandflora.com/

As of 2022, over 54% of the US population had a blood lead level above the 5-µg/dL threshold for “safe” exposure as children. This is primarily due to the presence of leaded paint in homes built before the 1970s, contaminated soils from man-made and natural sources, and exhaust from automobiles pre 1996 when leaded gasoline was used. To this day, runoff from leaded gasoline has left high amounts of lead in soil adjacent to roadways since lead does not biodegrade, or disappear over time, but remains in soils for thousands of years.

In modern day, we typically deal with lead remediation by removing and relocating the contaminated soil. Not a great solution, especially considering that so much of our lands are now contaminated and that you need a place to store all the contaminated soil. Some hopeful studies have demonstrated the ability of plants to absorb lead as a form of remediation with a variety of efficacy depending on the plant (see study) and taking decades to complete. While this may be great for decontaminating the soil, it is not great if you are trying to eat the plants being grown in that soil because they are now absorbing the risidual lead as well as arsenic from our modern day gasoline breaking down into the soil.

The active ingredient most widely used on residential lawns in the United States is a chemical mixture called 2,4-dichloro­­phenoxyacetic acid, or 2,4-D, which is sold in differing formulations under a variety of trade names. Another common herbicide is glyphosate. Studies of occupational exposure to agricultural pesticides (including 2,4-D and glyphosate) have found a positive correlation with certain cancers. To minimize exposure, don't spray your land with these chemicals and don't interact with land that has been sprayed for at least three days after, espicially for children or pets. These chemicals are also leaching into the below ground waterways, polluting drinking water, killing animals and important pollinators, and disrupting natural habitats. Grow or forage your own foods or support organic farms to avoid consuming these chemicals in your food. https://www.flourishandflora.com/post/foraging-around-soil-pollutants

💀 Would you survive?!

You're in the wilderness and come across some beautiful flowers. You stop to suck the nectar and nibble on a few blossoms. Which flowers do you pick? One of these is delicious and safe while the other will make you rather ill or could kill you.
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Choose Carefully!

If you picked the top, you chose the crabapple blossoms which are totally safe for human consumption! Their flowers and fruits are all edible. Like all things, some varieties are sweeter and larger than others. The crabapple itself is tastiest when cooked to make a jam, jelly, sauce, or pickle. Something else to know is that all apple seeds/cores include crabapples are somewhat toxic due to the presence of cyanogenic glycosides (the building blocks of cyanide). All things in moderation or just cut out the core of your apples!

The bottom choice is the beautiful, but deadly mountain laurel.

"Consume it in high enough quantities and your lips, mouth and throat burn. Nausea and vomiting, drowsiness, convulsions, and increasingly paralysis follow. Then comes coma and death. Children have been poisoned by merely sucking on the flowers of this plant. Even honey made from mountain laurel pollen is toxic.” - US Department of Agriculture

Always have a healthy respect and appreciation for nature! Graze on and stay safe!