So glad the turmeric is working for you!! I buy mine. :) It's not native to the Midwest.
I've made tea of stinging nettle - sadly, I was too good at chopping that out, and I don't have nearly as much of it in the woods anymore. Evil vinca minor, however, is dominating the understory. At the rate it's thriving, I'm afraid it will choke out the trees. They can take the Siberian elms - invasive non-natives planted by birds, 30 years ago, and sprouting everywhere that we don't mow, which is more than half the property. Scary stuff, these invaders. Those who say they can "live and let live" must not have as much stuff flourishing in tight quarters as we in the Midwest.
I'm broadening my horizons, welcoming back the broadleaf plantain, mullein, dandelion, and all that, and encouraging the ginger, but dang, that little native is slow to colonize. My tiny colony of mayapples is slowly expanding. (Thanks to my relentless pulling of the garlic mustard that was inhibiting it 20 years ago when we first moved here.)
See, there's a books' worth of stuff here, and no time to write it all. Still pulling that pasture grass!!
Looking forward to your herbal adventure stories from C.R.....
I've made stinging nettle tea as well! And used the cooked leaves in quite a few dishes. I also use the raw, stinging leaves to help with some of the skin lesions I get with lupus. Odd, that the chemicals which cause pain in healthy tissue actually numb the pain of inflamed tissue. You just have to work up a good bit of nerve to try it for the first time. I swear by the stuff.
You're brave - applying the sting of the nettle to inflamed tissue, and who ever guessed that what aggravates healthy tissue would alleviate the lupus-inflamed tissue! Who figured out that jewelweed and plantain lessen the itch of poison ivy?? So many primitive peoples were scientists, experimenting, observing, noticing, deducing.... thank you, ancestors!