The ramps have risen!

The ramps on the tiny terrace have broken their long hibernation. They made flowers last year, in summer, long after their leaves had disappeared in the heat. Several seeds formed and matured and I dug them back in. I wonder if they will germinate?

It takes around, give-or-take, roughly, approximately, more or less, seven years for a ramp grown from seed to be able to make its own flowers, and seeds. 

Don't encourage vendors to sell mountains of ramps. Do ask them to sell ramp leaves only. They can be packaged just like delicate leaves like chicories and salad. And do soak some of the rooted plants overnight before planting them in pots or in the soil where they will get spring sunlight and summer shade. They are an Eastern US native, and appreciate cold winters. Compost, leaf litter, and slightly acidic soil help, too. But mine just grow in potting soil, with some of their woodland neighbors. 

Many of my overwintered bulbs did not make it and turned to mush: lilies, alliums (the ornamental kind).  It's not the cold that bothers them, but a repeat freeze-thaw cycle, and wet feet. Ramps like wet feet, for a bit. And here they are.

Read all about how to grow ramps in this story. And what ramp habitat looks like in spot we visist every spring, in the Catskills.

_________________

Street Spring

While I never park our car beneath one (because we love her) I am very grateful to see the callery pears in bloom in the neighborhood.  

Their blossoms are a delightful froth, but the trees topple or drop limbs with little warning. They are described in arborist's terms as being weak-crotched. The trees have also become significantly invasive beyond their cosmopolitan habitats.

Speaking of weak crotches and super-invaders, if you are wondering what else you can do to support Ukraine against the invasion by Putin, look to your wallets: not for donations (assuming you have made those), but for withholding. The New York Times recently published a list of companies doing business with Russia, and it is depressing. In some cases, you can easily boycott their products. I have a guilty soft spot for Hellmann's mayonnaise, for instance, and I am hard-wired to eat Marmite. Both are manufactured by Unilever, one of those conscienceless mega-entities. 

Mayo is easy to make and miso is a good stand-in for Marmite.

It reminds me of the brands I grew up eating and sipping, as a white child in apartheid South Africa. Marmite, again, was one of them. So was Coca Cola (it was an occasional treat, but I loved it). Pepsi, on the other hand, withdrew. 

Capitalism is capitalism, but as a consumer you carry some weight. Throw it around.

____________________

Find me on Instagram

@66squarefeet

b255o? - I see you

There is an empty park a few blocks from where we live. Its beds have been bare for as long as I have known it (just over three years). It has benches, but it is barren. 

It could be a place where pollinators and people feel good. Some bee-watching and butterfly therapy. Maybe a hummingbird or two.

It is a fact of never-ending wonder that New York City's mayoral budget allocates less - less - than 1% to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. It's closer to 0.5%. And it's not just about plants and greening: the department oversees sports facilities, playgrounds, tarmac stretches of basketball courts, community centers, lifeguard training. The list is endless. Plants come last.

Pandemic budget cuts have left everyone deeply backlogged and worse-off than before. Nobody has time, staff, or money. Yet where did everyone go, flee to, during the last two years? The parks. For classes, for exercise, for meetings, for work, for birthdays, for school, for everything.

Parks are green jewels in this populous city's crown. Privately-funded conservancies shoulder the burden of keeping iconic spaces like Central Park and Prospect Park (and so very many more) in working order. But small, incidental parks like the one in my hood fall between the weedy cracks unless someone takes a keen personal interest in them. 

I discovered (that sounds quick, it was a meandering process) that this little park has an identity, but no name: it is b255o. It is a "sitting park". There's just not a lot of incentive to sit here. The fresh layer of wood chips may have been spread during its last inspection (December 2nd, if one looks it up). While I have approached the parks department and a stewardship program to see how we can formally initiate the procedure of adopting a park it will be a long time (I think) before I hear back. I did this all over ten years ago in Manhattan for a much larger, locked space; and that shuttered park is now an open, thriving space, but times change. It will take longer for the un-greased wheels to begin turning, in 2022.  

So we're going guerilla. For now.

I'm holding my nose and jumping in. Which means I ordered 30 Allium bulbs and a sign to explain what's going on. Hoping it will attract some (welcome) attention and discourage dog owners from letting dogs in the beds. Making a commitment helps motivate myself, too. Two friends-through-my-walks have already offered their labor.  

Now we just need, well, plants.

The demands on city plantings are high. They range from drought, to compacted or poorly draining soil, to pollution (dog pee and poop, salt, heavy metals), to theft by humans who want the plants for themselves, to old-fashioned stomping and crushing. So plant choices matter, and after that fingers must be crossed once they are in the ground.

The plants must tough enough for the climate, obviously (USDA Zone 7b). That's the easy part. But they must also be resilient enough to be able to grow without more than the occasional presence of a gardener, and especially, no supplemental watering: new plantings are vulnerable. So I expect setbacks and some teeth-gnashing.

As I think out loud here are some wish list plants that will hold up and become self-sufficient. Most are North American natives, but some are not. I'm thinking seasonal interest, benefits for pollinators and birds, and even some edible plants (in case someone is in desperate need of fennel fronds for their fish stew). 

The space now is sunny, but in summer will be a mix of high, dappled shade, thanks to the plane trees nearby. The corner above will have direct sun. The choices below will evolve and will be influenced by what is available where, and when - these will hopefully be donations. Holler if you have some spare shrubs lying about. 

B2550 Pollinator Garden

Shrubs:

2 Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp) - question mark; early flowers, midsummer fruit, vivid fall color

3  Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) - spring flowers, late summer fruit, beautiful fall color

3 Clethra/sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) - late summer flowers, scented, butterfly magnet

3  Dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii) - mid spring flowers, vivid autumn leaves

3  Oak leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) - early summer flowers are a bee magnet, flowers persist through early fall, beautiful bronzing leaf color through fall

3 Rosa but what form and cultivar? - 'Knockout' is the municipal standard but the barren flowers provide nothing for bees

Perennials:

30 Alliums (ornamental, no-name brand) - tall, striking, disliked by squirrels, bee-magnets; acquired!

10 Anise-scented goldenrod (Solidago odora) - early fall flowers, pollinator-magnet, edible leaves and flowers

10 Bronze fennel - tall, gorgeous foliage, flowers for pollinators, leaves for butterfly larvae, self-seeding

10 Foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia) - early spring flowers, bees love em. Native (I have babies that will make babies)

6 Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) - long-blooming, bee-favorite, scented foliage

3 Milkweed - (Asclepias - not sure what species, yet) pollinator magnets, lovely flowers, showy seed heads

6 Ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) - sculptural, makes many babies, sequesters heavy metals

6 Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) - early summer flowers, attractive seed heads, disliked by pests

6 Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) - fragrant, edible leaves, pollinator magnet-flowers in summer

12 Violets - spring optimism, fragrance, weed-smothering, self seeding

Annuals:

Jewelweed  (native Impatiens capensis) - attractive to hummingbirds, bumblebees, self seeds

Nicotiana (N. sylvestris) - statuesque, scented, attractive to hummingbirds

Papalo (Porophyllum ruderale) - people-pleaser, purely to make neighborhood Latinex cooks and eaters smile

Perilla/shiso/sesame leaf (Perilla frutescens) - self seeds (too freely), tall, striking, fragrant and edible leaves, drought tolerant, appealing to everyone

__________________

My Spring Classes at the NYBG

Dear Mr. Springsteen - thank you for the snow buntings

Dear Mr. Springsteen,

Thanks to you, the Frenchman (that's my husband) and I saw snow buntings for the first time last Sunday. At Sandy Hook, in New Jersey. They were minding their own business, just like you, when you were booked on a bogus DWI charge that made headlines three months after the event. 

(Snow buntings are a bird, by the way. Winter migrants in these parts.) 

Also, we saw Sandy Hook itself for the first time, minus the hordes of summer. It was covered in snow, from shoreline to shoreline. It was surprising, and stunning.

Until spotting a recent breaking-news headline of your arrest last year, I had not realized that Sandy Hook was a very striking park, or part of the National Gateway Recreational Area within easy driving-reach of the city. So I Google-mapped it. Just over an hour! We packed hot soup and a hot toddy and headed out from Brooklyn.

The articles about what seems like a nothing-event have riveted me. I don't read tabloids, and I avoid celebrity gossip. But there this was, in the upstanding New York Times. Whose reported version of the events keeps changing. The original articles are nowhere to be found online, thanks to the "Updated" loophole in digital media that erases former iterations. 

Those first - now missing or very padded - articles omitted a pertinent fact, and simply reported a report: the now super-repeated observations by one fastidious ranger, Officer Hayes. Which made you sound dead drunk. Not one initial article mentioned your blood alcohol level: one quarter of the legal limit. You had several shots to go.

Since this was such a minor event made major only by your celebrity status, I was very curious about who leaked it, and why. It was a shitty thing to do. But mostly it was a sense of bafflement: Why are they writing about it?

One of the first versions, in the breaking news column (seriously, this is breaking news? Oh, hi, clickbait) mentioned only, in That Ranger's words, that you were "visibly swaying" and smelled of alcohol. Later one said that you said (in exactly that disbelieving tone) that a fan had given you a bottle of Tequila. Where, it asked indignantly, was the evidence of this and why had no fan posted this on social media? 

A self-righteous op ed in the Chicago Tribune by JD Mullane wagged its finger at you, you naughty old man and concluded, "At 71, it’s foolish. Tipsy, alone, riding a motorcycle. Ranger Hayes may have saved an American legend... Or maybe it was a call for help, that Bruce is suffering on a level far deeper than we’d expect."

Really? What should you be doing at 71? Knitting in a group circle? Checking into senior living? Looking dapper (a patronizing word reserved purely for the respectably-dressed and old) on your way to church? Whatever you do, don't get on your motorbike and have fun.

Clearly you are begging for help. And Ranger Hayes should go on dog doo-doo duty for a month. Or six. Take JD Mullane with you.

And sad? A famous guy getting on his Triumph (very classy bike, by the way) and heading out alone, minus entourage, minders, or social media circus, to visit a favorite wild spot isn't sad. It's refreshing. And he has a shot, maybe two (like you said), of Tequila after a fan spots him and waves a bottle. That was a gracious thing to do. Fans can be a pain in the butt. 

Let's talk evidence. Why did it take several news cycles for that pertinent fact, your blood alcohol level, to be reported? 0.02%. The legal limit is 0.08%. Sorry, shouting. And why wasn't that the first fact to be quoted in any subsequent story? I know, because that would have un-story-ed it.

I'm not sure why I am this disgusted. Maybe it's the feeding frenzy. There is so much real hurt cascading down on us. But the relentless pursuit of meaningless clicks continues. The minute attention span to which we have agreed to become hostage drives everything information-related. The business model that makes it necessary for reputable news sources to bow down to their advertisers - who need eyeballs on ads - at the cost of proper reporting. The pressure that serious media are under to simply stay alive. I have no doubt that this blip boosted sales.

And today, in the breaking news column, bottom right, just where the first non-event broke over ten days ago, is the headline: Bruce Springsteen Drunk Driving Charges Dismissed. 

No kidding. Never saw that coming.

You can read the updated version of the updated update, here.

Ugh.

I'm going on a media diet.

But thank you for going to Sandy Hook. It's beautiful. The water, the view of Manhattan on the horizon, the dunes for days, and the tallest holly trees I have ever seen, growing in the sand. 

And for the snow buntings, visiting from the Arctic highlands.

________________

Forage On

Trash Forage - Prospect Park

I am organizing a different kind of walk for October 24th in Prospect Park: A Trash Forage. Instead of learning about edible plants, we will be helping the park by collecting the different kinds of trash people leave behind their sorry selves.

Please join me at 10.30am at the Wellhouse for two hours of trash grabbing-and-bagging, followed by a reward of cake. 

Tickets to reserve your spot are $25 and will be refunded to you in full after the walk, assuming you attended. 

We will be supported by the Prospect Park Alliance, the NGO whose unenviable job it is to take care of a vast public park that has seen unprecedented number of visitors during the pandemic. People have sought solace (and sometimes shelter) in the green space. At the same time the park has suffered unprecedented budget cuts by the City of New York. Even in normal times City funding of our public parks is shamefully minimal. 

"Although City parks make up 14% of NYC’s land, the Parks Department receives only 0.6% of the City’s total budget," writes Molly Fraser, on the website for the NYLCV (The New League of Conservation Voters). That is not a typo. Zero point six percent.

She continues: "Urban forests support the City’s environmental health, filtering out harmful pollutants, cooling temperatures, and supporting wildlife. In NYC, trees filter out an estimated 1,300 tons of pollutants, save nearly $94 million in health costs, capture 2 billion gallons of stormwater runoff, and store 1.2 million tons of carbon annually."

And how do you quantify the therapy, mental and physical, that the park has provided during the COVID crisis? 

The park has become everything to all people. Living room, bedroom, kitchen, work out area and yes, toilet. It needs help.

On our Trash Forage on Saturday the 24th we will meet to sign in, receive trash grabbers, bags and gloves. There will be cleaning supplies on hand but bring your own pocket sanitiser. Masks and social distancing are mandatory. 

After we have filled our bags we will clean our hands (again!) and gather for the freshly-baked cake in a nice kumbaya circle. 

__________

My Books

Sesame leaf - stalked from behind

The secret undersides of sesame leaf. Backlit in the morning sunlight.

I use its toothed leaves as wraps for deviled eggs or spicy meatballs, or folded around quick-pickled vegetables. Or I sliver then soften them in good soy (try Ohsawa nama Shoyu) for 30 minutes and transform warm seven-minute eggs or steamed eggs with the aromatic dressing.

What's in a name? 

If it's a common name - that is, the lingua franca for a plant (or animal or fungus) in any given region, versus the Latin and Greek binomial, or scientific name - things can be confusing. Because sesame? This plant is not even vaguely related to sesame-the-crunchy-seed (that would be Sesamum indicum). Common names are notoriously confusing. Instead, the burgundy-shadowed leaf belongs to Perilla. Specifically Perilla frutescens var. frutescens. 

Nope, not shiso

Are your eyes glazing over, yet? Snap out of it! Because this herb is often sold incorrectly as shiso, and shiso it ain't. The plants above are sesame leaf, not shiso. Even the grower (at the Grand Army Plaza  greenmarket) got it wrong. Sesame leaf (above) sturdier and less aromatic than shiso, but its rose-petal flavor is very similar. 

This is shiso. Shiso is...tighten your seatbelts: Perilla frutescens var. crispa! I know! Just one door down from sesame leaf, in terms of classification. And she - shiso - has frilly leaf-edges. Forgive me for going Jar-Jar Binx on you, but if you think, "Shiso frilly," you'll know shiso when you see it. She may be red, or green. But she be frilly. 

And why does it matter? Because facts always do, despite Trumpiverse. 

Shiso is associated more with Japanese cuisine, is highly aromatic, but otherwise tastes similar to the rougher sesame leaf, which is traditionally beloved in Korean cuisine.

I grow both. 

_____________

Walk with me at the NYBG 

15 October

Thai lime, makrut - just not the k-word

[This post was originally published on October 2nd, 2016 - the Thai limes have since moved with us and live on the Windsor Terrace where they are flourishing. I only bring them indoors when the temperatures are below 50'F at night - I am a more relaxed citrus parent, now!]

I moved the makruts (Thai limes) to our bright bedroom windows about a week ago, as overnight temperatures started falling below 60'F. Former citizens of Georgia, this will be their first New York winter.

They look very healthy and will have to be transplanted to deep pots, next spring, and later I will be pruning them to stay small. I use the leaves, of course, but fruit would be a wonderful bonus. If you've never smelled the bumpy-textured, green, fresh limes you're in for a treat when you do: intensely aromatic and very different from the grocery store Persian limes that we buy day in, day out.

"Kaffir" is a chilling word for South Africans; in South Africa it is a racist slur (still) used by racist people to refer to black and brown people. The US has the n-word. South Africa has the k-word. Its history is bloodily painful.

Still known as k-limes in many homes and listed as such by most growers, food stores and on menus, the enlightened and informed - the woke - call Citrus hystrix either Thai lime, or makrut; both are appropriate and time-honored names.

The Oxford Companion to Food agrees, and lists the fruit under M for makrut, with full explanation under the letter K. Modern Farmer published a good essay on the subject, too.

Above: to open a box that says this is startling.

Not one of my attempted reviews - 5-star for plant quality, packaging, speed of delivery, but with this one criticism - was published on Amazon, where I bought the trees. So I left a question about their name on Amazon: "Are you aware..." blablabla. The same night the grower called me, to my surprise. I felt he responded positively then, as well as in a later follow-up email, from support@lemoncitrustree.com [the company has since changed ownership].

I directed him for reference to the useful Missouri Botanical Garden's Plant Finder website, which is up-to-date in terms of this information.

But after four weeks neither the Amazon listing nor the grower's own website, Lemon Citrus Tree, reflects any changes at all, which is disappointing.

From a seller's point of view there is an economic issue: potential customers searching for the better-known k-lime will not land up on a site selling Thai lime or makrut. And a sale will be lost. But the marketing gods are in the details, and there are ways around this. The least I expect is a short explanatory paragraph. That would be the right - and very easy - thing to do.

If you find a lime sold as "kaffir," anywhere, carry the torch, and speak up.

____________________

Read Forage, Harvest, Feast

Let's take a deep breath

Yesterday's no-ABV (alcohol by volume) drinks for a plant walk and picnic on a sunny day out at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge were based on anti-viral elderberry (syrup as well as vinegar fermented from the flowers).

Consider this (brace yourself for bold and caps, I am a bit excited):

"As of Feb. 22, in the current season there were at least 32 million cases of flu in the United States, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 flu deaths, according to the C.D.C. Hospitalization rates among children and young adults this year have been unusually high."

Flu. Not The New Virus. New Virus infections? To date, 109,400 cases. WORLDWIDE.

After a blissfully virus-freakout-free month in Cape Town, returning to New York's news-environment and evolving response is like inhabiting an alternate reality. So it was very refreshing to lead that wild plant walk yesterday where no one seemed particularly perturbed and where the attitude was, Well, we always wash our hands and take the usual precautions against flu.

The Frenchman and I have always been a little OCD in terms of hand washing. We wash our hands the minute we walk in the door from The World. The world involves subways and surfaces and supermarkets. So home we come, and we wash, not using our hands to open taps, but our elbows.

In the car there is hand sanitizer for when we can't wash. I have trained myself never to touch my face unless my hands are clean. And we are rarely ill (well, there was a case of food poisoning, but not my food!).

So this new drill for some is a very old drill, for us.

A virtual stranger on Instagram harassed me via a direct message because I posted a picture of...travel! She says that I am suffering from "a dangerous cognitive dissonance." This from someone who doesn't believe in vaccinations. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

The response to the virus - personal for some, institutional for others - is more frightening than the virus itself. The threat of quarantine. Businesses going under for lack of support. Stock markets crashing. People being isolated, and frightened. By what? A virus that shows no evidence (so far, that may change) of being more threatening than flu. Flu is bad news:

"The flu appears far more dangerous to children, particularly very young ones, who can become severely ill. Children infected with the new coronavirus tend to have mild or no symptoms.""

Some sanity - at last - in the New York Times. But was it a headline? No. It is buried in the Health section.

And:

"The true death rate could turn out to be similar to that of a severe seasonal flu, below 1 percent, according to an editorial published in the journal by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Yet we are shutting down cities, killing businesses, and stoking panic.

Is it partly because so many people still seem to be deeply unaware of how they behave, and what the consequences can be? Basic hygiene? The flight attendant chewing her cuticles. The man picking his teeth on the subway. The nose-miner stuck in gridlock. The store manager wiping his open mouth with his hand and then greeting a customer with a handshake. The supermarket shopper licking her finger to open her flimsy produce bag which she then puts in her shopping cart whose handle she has been gripping.

Where have those hands been?

While I certainly do not want to be sick I am not afraid of getting the virus - if I do I will be ill, and then, in all likelihood, get better. Like almost everyone else. But the chances are good that I will not get sick. Because I am low risk (healthy) and because I take precautions.

What I am afraid of is the fear.

It is out of hand.

Keep calm, and wash your hands.

_______________

Book a Spring Walk

Columbus Day Walk

Origins and Consequences Walk
Prospect Park
14 October, 11am - 1.30pm
$52

Once upon a time Columbus discovered America.  Or did he? Oh, dear...

It was here all the time, of course.

Filled with indigenous peoples and plants. In the wake of European settlement unfamiliar plants appeared, and began to alter the botanical landscape.

Use this federal holiday celebrating Columbus (and was he Italian or Portuguese, anyway?) to come and meet and celebrate the delicious native plants of the Northeast, learn some of the traditional ways of using them, and discover the exotic and useful plants that have naturalized here. Our wild-inspired picnic will feature native American ingredients (think fermented, dried serviceberries), as well as Portuguese treats (pastéis de nata, anyone?), reinterpreted with native and invasive ingredients.

Please bring your opinions. There may even be a food fight.

Walk Complete

Wild Salmon in your Belly

I should be writing about my garden and here I am writing fish. It happens.

Backstory: The Frenchman and I eat very little fish. I would like to eat more. It's wonderful to cook with and it is healthy. But it is not that easy, even in this Biggest of Apples, to find fish that is ethically sourced and caught. It is simpler to know where meat comes from than it is fish. Fish are the last free roaming wild thing that we are ripping out of the ocean by the ton. And the collateral damage (to use war-speak) or tamely named 'by catch' - the other critters that are swept up or killed in nets - is deleterious (if you care about conservation, and that is a whole other philosophical conversation). Then there are fish farms, of course, but you really, really need to do your homework to figure which ones are not causing more harm than good.

In local bluefish and mackerel season we are on them. Strong fish that are good on barbecues. And we love locally caught trout.

Gabrielle Langholtz, my friend, and former editor at Edible magazine (as well as author of The New Greenmarket Cookbook), introduced me last year to the family-owned Iliamna Fishing Company, based out of Alaska. Once a year out they go in their boats and catch wild sockeye salmon. The fish are cleaned, flash frozen and packaged on board. For eight years that catch has been sold to local customers, using a community supported fishery (CSF) model. They also sell in Oregon markets (Portland, Eugene and Wilamette Valley), and New York City.

Last October I cycled to pick up our first share from the Red Winery in Brooklyn. Yes, the winery is on New York Harbor, no there are not grape vines on site.

The 12lb share of salmon costs $204. I know that is a lot of money. But we received nine sides of gorgeous red sockeye salmon. It works out to $22 a side. Which is less than you would pay  for wild salmon in a store, for considerably higher quality. I still have four sides in the freezer.

I have grilled it, poached it, made gravlax (above)...

...and recently a roast salmon spring dashi with ramps, Japanese knotweed and morels (recipes will be in my the wild foods cookbook, yay!).

It is the best salmon I have ever eaten.

I am writing about it now because I just received the email from Iliamna saying that now is the time to sign up for a 2017 share. You pay half up front, which keeps the fishery's show on the road. On pick up in October you pay the balance.

I am rarely enthused enough to tell people to go out and buy something, but this is one of those times. If you live in those hoods. There are other CSF's out there, now, so do some Googling if you live elsewhere and are interested in learning more about where the fish you eat comes from.

In other news, there is one spot left on my Central Park ramble on May 20th and four left on the Inwood Hill Park foray on May 13th. We will not be fishing, but hunting for edible invasives and learning about delectable native plants. And having a picnic, of course. Because life is too short not to picnic.

Hey (idea strikes)! Maybe I'll make some potted salmon with ramp salt to spread on nettle sourdough!

Gardening with our brains

After more than a month in Cape Town I came home to a late summer garden where beans were bristling from bushes and fence. Also a lot of weeds. Long, hot days, lots of water from the stellar watering team of Julia and Kirstin, and the weed seeds of years resulted in something close to a jungle. And then there is the Wisteria that Wants to Rule the World. It should work for ISIS.

So two straight days were spent gardening. I was eaten alive by striped-leg mosquitoes.

I admired the basil hedges. The Thai basil (left) arrived in a late winter packet from Grow Journey. Late winter is now a funny memory. The fennel is a row I made from many of the scattered volunteers that popped up late in early summer, dropped by my plants last year - the ones that moved with us from Harlem.

And then I picked all the beans, to make way for cooler weather crops to come (I left the climbing scarlet runners in hopes of luring those hummingbirds).

Grow Journey's 'Painted Pony' beans are surprises in disguise. Their slim green pods hide the real treat, which is the beautifully mottled seed inside. While we ate plenty of these beans fresh in July, I now have a pile which I am in the process of shelling. This is the first time I kept beans long enough to dry and harvest just the meaty seeds. They will be cooked gently with whole cloves of garlic and garden thyme, with a nod to Terence Hill, who will always be the best bean I eater I don't know. You have to watch My Name is Nobody to see what I mean.

Grow Journey's packets of Chinese cabbage, kale, and August subscription of bok choy and lettuce mixes will be planted, soon, and then there will the surprise packet of September. What will be in it? I have left rows open in anticipation.

I was thrilled to see a monarch feeding for a long time on the wild ageratum (Conoclinium coelestinum). I had cut quite a lot back in my gardening frenzy, but left plenty of flowers.

And now for a rant.

One of my (many) pet peeves is the thoughtless use, in smugly righteous but underinformed gardening circles, forums, blogs, and conversations, of terms like "chemical." It makes my hair stand up. "I don't use chemicals on my garden," or, "I won't eat food that is grown with chemicals."

Uh, yes, you do, and yes, you will.

For zot's sake. Everything is chemicals. "Organic" is chemicals. What you really mean to say is, I don't use synthetic fertilizers/insecticides." SYNTHETIC. The PR team for good science is about as efficient as Barack Obama's PR team. Which is to say, woeful. The failure in his presidency was his team and his party's utter failure at communicating its successes. Fire the lot.

The good stuff does NOT speak for itself. Good science and good leadership need as much PR as the total shite that is dispensed by people too lazy to read more than the headlines. In its absence crackpots flourish. In the garden, and in politics.

The Grow Journey blog, as always, provides excellent, thoughtful information about healthy growing practises. Problems are identified and sustainable solutions are provided. Aaron von Frank's essay on synthetic nitrogen and why you don't want it in your garden or in the edible landscape that grows the food you buy is essential reading.

As Aaron writes in the nitrogen piece, "some issues take longer than a tweet or a paragraph to explain." And if you are planting anything, or care about what you eat, it's on you to inform yourself. Read that article, and share it. It is fascinating, and important.

Finally, tip of the day, fairly new to me (someone on my Facebook page suggested it - thank you), from a Grow Journey post about preventing garden pests:

Got mildew? Break out the fungicides? "No! Not unless you want to also kill the beneficial fungi in your garden that help your plants," writes Master Gardener Eliza Lord. "Powdery mildew can be easily prevented using organic methods. The easiest, most proven method of treatment involves milk. (Yes, that white liquid from cow udders.) Make a mixture of milk and water (30% milk to 70% water is fine) and spray it evenly on the surface of the leaves of affected plants during the morning on a sunny day... In studies, this method has proven to be as effective as any synthetic fungicide in stopping powdery mildew."

Now: Got milk?

Serviceberries are ripe

On my way home from a garden consultation in Prospect Heights (a neighborhood that I have not visited in about four years - when we looked at a very nice apartment with a waterless roofdeck, and which is changing so fast you can feel the whiplash) I saw a triangle of park dripping with ripe serviceberries. No one paid them any mind, not the birds, not the people. They were fat with purple juice. So I grazed for a while, cursing the fact that I had no nifty paper bag in my handbag. Bad forager.

I have never seen them at a greenmarket. But when I started writing about Japanese knotweed five years ago, I had never seen that at a farmers market, either. That has changed. It's now on the menu at Daniel, trickles in to greenmarkets and shows up in all sorts of wild food forums.

My message is: New York? Serviceberries are ripe. NOW! They are sweet, similar to blueberries in texture, but juicier, and with a flavor more like apples, And like marzipan when cooked. And very soon I must collect a bagful or two. I think I like them raw, best.

You're a New Yorker who thinks this fruit is dirty because it grows in a city? You grow in a city! You drink its water, breathe its air.

A surprising number of educated people have perplexing myopia when it comes to appreciating the course taken by the food they eat to reach their plate. Out of season blueberries, wrong-season raspberries and strawberries drenched in pesticides, often grown thousands of miles away, hold zero appeal for me. They are un-fruit. This is the real deal, ripe right now, and gone by next week.

Dig in.

The native in the garden

Polygonatum biflorum - Solomon's seal, beginning to bloom here at Chez Mosquito (no sign of mosquitoes yet - sssssssh! Don't wake them up!). This is a Northeastern woodland perennial. I divided the large clump late last year and the Solomon's seal is now growing in three spots in the beds that edge the garden.

Because the clump was so mature I had the luxury of digging up some of the rhizomes and eating them. Very crisp and slightly sweet. Please don't do this in the woods. Eat your own. An interesting indigenous food.

Since it is Earth Day (isn't every day?) - I might as well drag the soapbox over and say: garden consciously. Make informed choices. Research what is invasive in your area. Just because it is pretty doesn't mean you should plant it. Your personal choices affect the bigger picture. Depending on where you live, dig out your loosestrife, ban the invasive barberry, toss the burning bush, do not plant those morning glories.

Plant more natives - they are well-adapted to your conditions. Ask for them at your local nursery. Demand them at Home Depot.

And while you're at it. Eat the weeds. The rest of my day will see me making garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) pesto and ground elder (goutweed, Aegopodium podagraria) and garlic mustard summer rolls. For tomorrow's wild foods walk in Central Park. See you there.

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Ramps, loved to death

Save the ramps! Eat the field garlic!

I collected this bunch of the invasive onions - often called lawn chives - in Inwood last weekend. We ate them in a wild pasta Alfredo and in the pan juices of a roast chicken. Some of the greens will go into a loaf of cheese bread for a walk I am leading in Central Park this Saturday.

At Wholefoods in Gowanus I saw some sad, skinny, limp little ramps retailing at $11.99/lb. This was a week ago. The smallest ones were pencil-thin. There ought to be a minimum size requirement for ramps, like with fish and lobsters. Ramps (Allium tricoccum, an indigenous plant) grow very slowly, and are being overharvested in many wild areas. They are listed as vulnerable in NY.

The perplexing thing was that the sign said "grown in Massachusetts." Grown, rather than foraged from the wild? I know of no ramp-growing enterprise, anywhere. And one week ago it was too early to be finding ramps in MA, because they have only just appeared locally. Can anyone enlighten me?

The ideal way to deal with a patch of ramps is to harvest a leaf from each of several clumps - the leaves are packed with flavour, and very tender. And if you must collect a bulb, pick the fattest in the clump, and slice it just above the root. This takes more time for you, the ravenous forager, but it allows the rest of the clump to keep on trucking, rather than being rampocided into wild food memory.

About growing ramps: They are challenging to cultivate, as the seeds take months to germinate, but if you have humus-y soil, spring sunlight and summer shade (under a high cover of deciduous trees), then you're in business. My friend Steven Schwarz (Delaware Valley Ramps) sells bulbs in the fall as well as live plants in spring.

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Tomorrow's Table

When we returned from Cape Town I found a package wrapped in ribbon waiting for me. In it was a book from a friend, Leon van Eck. Yesterday I opened it and began to read (yes, I did wipe the cover after I removed my drink).

Tomorrow's Table is written by Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and Raoul Adamchuck, an organic grower. They are married.

Leon - who is also a geneticist -  and I have had digital scraps in the past about GMO's. When I hear the acronym, I (and thousands like me) think dark Monsanto thoughts. And we recoil.

There is so much more to the story, and while I am only a couple of dozen pages in, I am hooked.

If you read labels, if you care about how your food is grown, if you are a grower of edible plants, this book is for you. It is essential and easy reading for people who consider themselves responsible and informed eaters.

Thank you,  Leon.

Friends don't let friends dine in the dark.

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                             Book an Autumn Walk 

The day of the rainbow

 Brooklyn

Better late than never. 

Sometimes, there is good news.

 Brooklyn, by the Frenchman

Marriage equality. 

 Cape Town

In South Africa gay marriage was legalized in 2006. 

Vancouver, by the Frenchman

A big rainbow hug to all our gay American friends.

A big kiss for the activists and quiet fighters who made it happen.

And a steadfast wish that discrimination everywhere will find an end.

(Now, do I have what it takes to make a rainbow cocktail?)

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