Chronicle of Unaided Green

One of the good parts about eating the same thing every day is that I only have to think about what I'm fixing for Phil, which theoretically opens up time for me to work, write, play...And the good thing about having a day off from that each week is that I can release my pent-up palatal and culinary curiosity! (Actually, the truth is that more I'm 'on a program,' the less interested I am in moving away from it: more on that in a future post.) Of course, the truth is that there is always more to do. We're planting our gardens, which takes some time, and also getting ready for a trip across the bay to see what the wildlife and greenlife is doing there.

Over here, nettles are well-established, but there are many other things growing beautifully with no help from  us.

Those feathery-looking pale stalks (in the photo below) are horsetail grass, equisetum arvensis: ancient as the paleocene and the most ineradicable, rampant weed you've ever met. Like nettles, they are super-high in silicon and are thus touted by superfoodists. But I can't imagine a good way to make them digestible by humans. The silicon means that their internal structure is like ground glass. If you juiced them, you'd need a new juicer every month! They are very handy as scouring pads/bottle brushes, though. They can spread up to 30 feet per year horizontally under ground, so all our attempts at covering a patch with black tarps to suppress all weed growth have been futile--they just keep on moving in from sideways and under!

Oh, and all horse owners who live around here give their horses vitamin B shots, because horses love horsetails, eat lots of them and it depletes their vitamin Bs, which can be fatal. When people say that animals always know what's nutritious and good for them, never overeat, never eat something poisonous, always know when to stop, it makes me think that they haven't been around animals very much.

These are chocolate lilies (also known as 'stink lilies.') They are a carbohydrate source: you have to dig up the bulbs and cook them. They're called 'Indian rice.' Phil has tried them and says they're very bland. I've yet to play with them but will do so this year.

Fiddlehead ferns with their parchment cauls, unfurling, spiraling toward the light...

It's fascinating how they can be under the earth and unfurling already. I ate lots of them steamed last year. There are warnings against eating them raw, and  I think it's something else besides the oxalic acid.

Our raspberries have mostly been casualties of the rampaging snowshoe hares. The hares killed so many trees this winter (by gnawing all the bark off) and did the same to most of our raspberry canes. So sad... But there are a few with new growth on them, as you can see (the cane in the middle of the picture has new leaves about half-way up):

This graceful, gentle plant is flowering already! Can you see those adorable little yellow-green buds?

In spring, we call it 'twisted stalk.' Before it flowers, you can eat its twisted stalk: succulent, slightly reminiscent of cucumber. In fall, we call it 'watermelon berry.' Those little buds flower into succulent, pendulous, pulpy, mild-tasting berries. A little like watermelon, which isn't surprising given the cucumber note of the green part.