Mullein

I'm pretty much a modern hippie, as I've mentioned before. Frying up some extremely delicious dandelion fritters for dinner last week (seriously, they were sooooo good) certainly qualifies me for true hippiedom, especially since they were wild crafted by hand while my children ran around unsupervised, though I did insist on shoes and sunscreen. But anyway. I just wanted an excuse to talk about those fritters again because they were exceptional nuggets of delectable delight. Like totally.

But I'm also an amateur herbalist (which ties right in to my original point about hippieness). I've recently learned about mullein, a plant I was familiar with as a mountain girl with an interest in botany and wildflower identification, but it turns out this large, prolific plant is also a heavyweight in the herbal world, with helpful properties such as promoting lung health, healing coughs and respiratory infections, and fighting ear infections. I enjoyed wildcrafting the dandelions so much I've been on the lookout for more herbs I might be able to collect on my own... And mullein fit the bill. It grows beautifully between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, although I think it's even more widespread. It was easy to find many wild areas with mullein growing around Los Alamos.

They like sandy, disturbed soils, and the Las Conchas fire burned though here just a couple of years ago.

Ladybugs like mullein, too.

And I harvested plenty. 

And, as I learned from Wikipedia, mullein wards off curses and evil spirits... So it's even more useful than I thought!