I'm back and I'm a married lady! Not only did I have a fabulous weekend, but I learned something too! First off, the fabulous weekend....I truly love the norcal coast. We stayed in Arcata and I drooled over all of the beautiful flowers that were blooming everywhere, particularly the dahlias as big as my head.:) I even found the perfect flowers at the local market for the wedding....they matched my dress perfectly......chocolate dahlias and chocolate cosmos. mmmmmmmmm....delish! Then we stayed at a place in Mendocino that had some amazing gardens...they were that fantastically overgrown english type of gardens that I love. This is where the learning came in.....we were walking down to the beach before we left yesterday and I noticed all of the mint growing along the trail. On the way back, I decided some fresh mint would smell lovely during the car trip home so I reached down with both hands to pick some. My hands immediately started stinging and I dropped the plant I had just picked. The stinging only grew worse and I didn't know what to do. My new husband looked at me panic-stricken......and said.........."stinging nettle!" *DOH* Needless to say my hands stung the entire day, they felt like the pins&needles you get when your foot is asleep and it is starting to wake up....but it didn't stop. The only thing that helped.....benadryl. The moral of the story: don't pick anything that looks like mint but has minute stinging hairs that deposit a mixture of crazy stinging chemicals under your skin as soon as you touch it.
