Feeding & Nutrition

A friend dared me to eat nettles, which is the only reason this story starts where it does. He grows them on purpose, behind a fence, gloves on, and he simmers them the way other people simmer stock. I called it a phase. Then his dog, a dull-coated lurcher, grew a coat you could see your face in, and I am a sucker for a before-and-after I did not expect, so I took the recipe and a pair of gloves and a healthy disrespect for my own gardening skill.

The soup itself is nothing. Nettles, a potato, an onion, water, and you blend it green. I did not eat much of it. But the dog, our Pip again, had been scratching through a wet spring, the kind of itch that keeps you both awake, and the vet had shrugged at the usual things, so I stirred a spoon of the cooled soup into his dinner on a whim and waited to be proved wrong.

What happened was quiet. Not a cure, not a miracle, just the scratching got less, slowly, over a fortnight, the way a tide goes out and you only notice when the beach is wider. I am not claiming nettles fixed anything a vet could name. There may have been other reasons. But the itch that had ruled our evenings eased, and the green spoon became a habit, and the habit outlasted the dare, which is the only test that matters.

I grow a patch now, properly, behind the same fence, because Pip will put his nose to the nettle leaves through the gap and wait, and that is a dog asking for a vegetable, which is not a sentence I thought I would write. The soup is for him, mostly. I tell people it is for me and they nod, and the ones who know the dog know better, and the ones who know better do not say.

There is a lesson in here about listening to the weird advice from the friend with the good dog, and about not being too proud to try the cheap green thing before the expensive white thing. The vet is still the vet. The nettles are a side note. But the evenings are quieter, and the dog sleeps through the scratch, and the fence behind the garden grows something useful, and I owe the dare a thank-you I will never actually give, because he would never let me hear the end of it.

If your dog itches through a damp season and the usual tub has done nothing you can feel, a spoon of cooled nettle soup costs you a glove and an afternoon. It may do nothing. It may do the small thing. Either way the dog gets a green dinner and you get a story, and some springs the small thing is the only thing worth having.

I learned the foraging the hard way, because the first leaves I picked were the wrong ones, the stinging kind without the young tenderness, and Pip turned his nose up, which is rare, and I understood I had made soup from the part of the plant that fights back, and the friend laughed for a week. You pick the top four leaves, he said, the soft ones, the ones a goat would choose, and I have not got it wrong since, and the dog has not refused since, and the garden has a corner I tend like a medicine cabinet, which is a strange thing to say about weeds.

The vet, when I mentioned it, did not roll her eyes, which surprised me, and said greens are fine if he tolerates them, which he does, and the white tub sits in the cupboard still, untouched, because the green spoon did the thing the tub promised and cost a glove and an afternoon instead of a tenner and a shrug. Some springs the itch comes back worse, and I add the tub for a week, and then I go back to the fence, because the fence is his, and the tub is theirs, and the dog, given the choice, waits by the nettles, and I let him, because he is usually right about what he wants.

The white tub sits in the cupboard, untouched, a quiet monument to the dear fix I did not need, because the fence behind the garden grows the green spoon for free, and the dog, given the choice between the tub and the nettles, waits by the fence every spring, and I let him, because he is usually right about what he wants, and the itch, when it comes back, meets the soup before the powder, and the evenings stay quiet, and the dare, long since forgiven, bought us both a remedy cheaper than a vet visit and stranger than any I would have bought, and the garden keeps its corner, and the dog keeps his spoon, and the spring keeps its small, green, honest cure, and the vet keeps her shrug, and I keep the fence, and the whole silly bargain holds, because someone paid attention to what the dog was actually doing, as the vet, in her quiet way, told me to.