Rumex hastatulus

It was one of those moments. I was biking along a rails to trails, stopping and taking pictures of this and that plant for past and future blogs. Better pictures are always good. I was taking a picture of a pin cherry blossom when a woman walking on the trail asked me what it was because she said she had never seen it blossoming. I told her then pointed out a few more plants and even got her to sample some Rumex hastatulus.  I also showed her some Teloxys ambrosiodes, which we only smelled, having no tacos available. I handed her a “Green Deane, eattheweeds.com” card and she started walking. About a hundred feet away, she turned around and yelled “Deane!” I looked up and she said “you made my day.”  …and she made mine.

The last time I visited relatives in Greece, September 2006,  I had “tea” with one of two then-living first cousins of my grandmother, both in their 90s, Maria and Alexandros Karantzalis. And while that might be relevant to write about here some day, it was the tea that was interesting. It was quite nice. My relatives sent me on my way with some. That tea, of course, was not oriental tea but resembled it. I learned in time it was an herbal  mountain tea, Sideritis usually.

Last week, a year and a half later, I wondered…. I know it likes to grow on cool mountains but … I shook the package and got about 70 seeds. I put them in little peat pots. None have sprouted yet. No doubt I violated some law, which brings me to lawyers. Do you know real estate lawyers now advice against clover because it attracts bees and bees sting and stings can lead to law suits. I think we need more bees and less lawyers (and I say that as one accepted to law school.) Most of the folks elected to state legislatures are lawyers, and they spend their time making laws. That seems to me like an incestuous conflict of interest.  Perhaps being a lawyer should automatically disqualify someone from holding public office… Bee keeping might be appropriate….

Green Deane and Mom

My mother was a horrible cook.

I used to joke she thought I was a Greek god: Every meal was either a burnt offering or a sacrifice.

I learned to cook in self-defense. So I have only two or three favorite flavor memories from childhood: Wood-fired baked beans in the winter with homemade baked bread; my mother’s own concoction of Christmas pudding, her over-baked dry pumpkin pie, and something she had little to do with, hard cider. As I’ve mention in the write up about hard cider, what I remember most, besides the taste, was it was a simple, unadorned creation.  Don’t misunderstand me, I like pub cider but it loses something from the tree to the pub.

I will freely admit to being a critic of today’s sterile, packaged, commercialized society. No, I am not against capitalism or technology and I am green within reason, but when it comes to food and nutrition I think our ancestors got along better without nutritionists and doctors than we do with them. And the cider somewhat typifies that.

You can make basic cider two ways, put it in a warm container in the corner and wait a while, or sterilize it, pamper it, chemical it, boil it and pump it up with artificial carbonation. That strikes me as too elaborate. I am not a Luddite, if I were I would be using a quill on parchment not a blog. But less is more, simpler is usually better. When the fall apples used to come in, that is ripen, the natural course for them was to ferment. No I am not alluding to a grand scheme of things or the Doctrine of Signatures. But what I am saying is I think nature got along fairly well without human sophistication. Cider, like wine, can be an elaborate affair, but it is not necessary. My simple cider is unadorned. It’s not complex. It’s natural and good. I find that not only appealing but comforting and delicious.

On the shortest day of the year one should take a long look around. It’s the inventory time of year, a bit of soul searching. That requires a little looking back and some looking forward, which is why January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of gates, which open both ways.

Why the beginning of the year, or the end of the year, is not on the shortest day of the year eludes me. It would make some tidy annual sense. For six months more daylight is added to each day then for six months substracted. We may celebrate the beginning of the year on January first, but nature does it Dec 21, 22 or 23. If I were dictator of the world I would have the year start on the shortest day, and I would totally eliminate Daylight Saving Time. Actually Pop Gregory XIII tried to do that but was several days off whch is why we are several days off.

As I look back it was quite a solar year. I manage to add more edible plants to my website and several videos. I now have a total of a full day’s worth of viewing, the largest resource of foraging videos on the internet. Indeed, this site and related videos are the most views site and videos on the internet about foraging well exceeding 1.5 million hits. That’s not a bad accomplishment. Many of my inovations have been copied which tells me I’m doing some things right. One huge change recently was creation of this new website.

Looking back there are also many things I would have done differently. Some of those early videos are amateur. Little mistakes do creep in. Too often I talked too fast, or could have done better camera work. And I’m still finding typos on the website. Some day there will be none.

As for the year ahead: The website will be expanded dramatically. Speaking engagements will go up and I’d like to get the DVDs made. And of course, I have a long list of plants to add to the site — hundreds in fact — and people are always asking for more videos. It keeps one busy.  But mostly I’d just like to enjoy the work, and I hope you do to. This past year has been quite challenge, but then, again the measure of a captain is stormy seas.

So on this shortest of days the long view is good. May yours be good, too.