I missed most of the free-for-all shit-fight that is Xmas shopping this year. 

The week before Xmas, Wednesday or Thursday  Janine and I were pruning some extravagant growth from the shiraz vines, to make it easier to weed the garden beds. Nothing happened!
3 days later, on Sunday morning, I woke with tightness across my chest, head ache and achy bones. We had been to the Village Xmas party the night before, so I thought ‘COVID’!

Rat test all clear, next day worse, 2nd RAT test, all clear again. Next day no better, so went into town to get a PCR test, as RAT tests aren’t all that reliable. The local duty doc says “probably flu!” The next day, PCR returns all clear, for Covid, RSV and Flu. So it’s something else? About this time the back of my arm began to ache, so I show’d Janine, and she said Ouch! That looks terrible. I’d been out driving and noticed that the sun on my driving arm made it hurt.

So then I’m thinking that it’s all about some sort of chemical burn from an unknown toxin of animal or vegetable origin? (I eliminated mineral.) First thoughts were venom, but spiders, scorpions, snakes all leave puncture marks and the initial strike is painful. I felt nothing.

So, my next thoughts were plant sap. I know that the thick white sap from figs and some weeds, like dandelion can cause skin burns, but these grape vine tendrils were 1.2  metres up off the ground, away from all weeds. 

The scratch pattern suggests scraping across something.
At first I was at a loss to think of ‘what’ and ‘how’, but pretty sure that it was some sort of contact dermatitis from a toxic plant sap?I’ve been pruning grape vines for 40 years and never experienced anything like this before.
Now 2 weeks on its settled down and is no longer so red and angry looking, and the clear pustules have gone. My GP comes back to work on the 2nd, so I have an appointment with him then. But it’s left me living with the symptoms of flu or COVID, even though it isn’t that. I have achy joints, electric blue razor sharp headache, and feeling pretty tired most of the time.

Of course, I googled it and the best match I could find was ‘Rhus tox tree’, but we don’t have one of those in our place. 

However, I think that I’ve finally got it sorted out.

As I read on, I discovered that some of our edible garden vegetables are capable of irritating skin and causing ‘phytophotodermatitis’. It’s a special combination of first getting in contact with the offending sap, then getting strong sun exposure after that. If the plants have any ‘furocoumarins’ then the skin becomes very sensitive to sunburn. Hence phyto-photo-dermatitis. Once burnt, there is no treatment, you just have to sit it out – in the shade!

The most common garden plants that contain furocoumarins are the ‘Apiaceae’ family represented by parsley, celery and parsnip. Who’d have thought? The other family is ‘Rutaceae’, containing rue and citrus plants. In fact, one of the names for this phytophotodermatitis is ‘Margarita burn’, from sucking on limes in the hot sun! I kid you not! Some people can get burnt from the lime juice on their skin in full sun.

Who could have imagined that my lovely vegetable garden, normally such a safe place of creativity and enjoyment, would turn out to be so toxic to me?
So it finally all fell into place. I was pruning the side of the vines alongside the veggie garden beds. Janine worked on the other, more open, north side. I got a few scratches on my arm from the short stubs of the pruned vines, just enough to rough up the skin a bit, but no pain. No reason to take any notice. I carried out the prunings up the row, then on the return trip down the row, in the opposite direction, to cut more, I had to walk past the seeding heads of a bed of parsnips and parsley, exactly at the same height as my shoulder and its receptive skin. No reason to take any notice. Apparently there is a wild parsnip that is known to be very toxic, but even domestic parsnips still carry some furocoumarins.

The perfect storm comes about when; It’s hot and I work in a singlet, arms and shoulders exposed, I get a few light scratches from dead vine stubs  Nothing worthy of noticing. Brush against garden parsnip flowering heads. No reaction then either. BUT!

Wait 2 days, then and go out driving in bright sunshine, in the middle of the day, exposing my right side driving arm to full sun. That is when my arm started to hurt for no apparent reason. None of the critical events were obviously linked, so few clues to go on. But now that I have educated my self on this issue, 

I’ll be wearing long sleeves when working near parsley, parsnips and celery in the future.

Having spent a week in bed, with the symptoms of what I first imagined were the same as covid, but with sun burn on one arm, it’s been a very quiet one for me. The big solstice day fell just at the end of the week, so I was able to take part in our beautiful family Xmas lunch of baked garden vegetables in a honey soy dressing, with a garden/orchard salad of red plums with cucumber, capsicum, tomato, red onion and parsley.  All really delicious, cooked on sunshine and no animals were hurt in this meal.

We’re trying hard to keep it all simple, but somehow, Xmas has morphed into a time of extravagant excess for so many. Loads of junk changes hands, some of it doesn’t even last the day and is destined to go straight to landfill. We don’t want to add to the miss-treatment/torture of caged animals, nor wrap/package things needlessly. I sound like a real killjoy, but I’m not. I want to give time and love and caring conversation instead of ‘things’. Stuff doesn’t really fill any emotional gap in any stocking. I’m not being mean spirited either. I give the equivalent amount of money to a charity instead. I just want to do as little damage to the earth as is possible while still living a ‘normal’ 1st world life style, although mine is a strange, green influenced, non-consumerist, carbon constrained, hybrid 1st world life style.

I’m sure we’ve all been at the supermarket and thought, well, I could just pop these last few things in the basket and be out of here. But I don’t want to buy my mushroom or meat in a shrink-wrapped plastic packet. It’s unnecessary, wasteful and environmentally damaging. The only option then is to to check out, go to the other shop in town and buy the meat un-packaged from the butcher, and the mushrooms un-packaged in a loose fill paper bag from the grocer. It’s easy enough to do, but takes loads of energy and is quite time consuming. It also means driving further and finding a parking space 3 times! If I were driving on petrol, it would be a waste of fuel. 

I am no saint. I often fail my own test. but when I am on my own, feeling OK and on top of things, I find myself doing the rounds of 3 supermarkets, the butcher and the green grocer.  I go with a list for each one. I don’t look left or right. If I can’t find the item or anyone to ask, I leave without it. They loose. I don’t really need all that much anyway. Most of what I buy is discretional/peripheral. However I do like to make a rendezvous with the fish truck that comes up from the coast each week. That is our main source of protein. Most of the rest of our food comes from our garden.

It’s not unusual for me to go to only 2 isles in a big supermarket. I make a ‘Bee-line’. Go for what I came for. I refuse to be distracted. I leave. I have no respect for the price gouging, profit-at-all-costs, main-street-wrecking, rip-off tactics of the big 2 supermarkets. I only go there for one or two products that I can’t find anywhere else. I’d be happy not to go there at all. However, I’m only human and essentially lazy, just like most people. I really have to push myself to shop as little and as ethically as possible. It’s just that I was brought up to think ‘green’ about all my life choices. Environmentalism is very deeply embedded in my psyche. I can’t help myself.

Trying to shop ethically is hard, time-consuming and ultimately very unrewarding. because no matter what you buy, there is that feeling that I could have done better, or, maybe I shouldn’t have bought it at all.

Life is strange, there are no instructions, no right answers (left answers may be less damaging?) and life is a constant source of learning by failure and experience! I’m doing the most that I can with the least that I have. It’s the journey. Who’d have thought that shopping was hard and gardening was dangerous!

Nothing is ever finished, Nothing is perfect, and Nothing lasts.