Worm moons

The Frenchman and I were sipping our drinks on the terrace last night and discussing the spiraling of events in the time of Virus - wondering whether or not to jump on cheap air tickets or whether travel will be shut down (I say, Jump), when I spotted this moon rising above his right shoulder.

We stopped talking, as one should, and watched.

His pictures will be better.

It had to be a special moon, and turns out it was: the first of three supermoons this year (a supermoon is when a full moon coincides with its perigree - the point in its orbit when it is closest to Earth). And this one is known as the Worm Moon! Because worms tend to break dormancy around this time of year. Since yesterday's temperature was 20'C/68'F - let's assume the worms are woke!

Come and greet the worms and early spring things (maple blossoms, lesser celandine, field garlic, garlic mustard and so much more) on my walk on March 19th, our Vernal Equinox, on an early evening stroll in Prospect Park (5pm - 7pm), There will be a wild drink and spring snacks. Book via the link below.

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Book a Spring Walk and Picnic

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.

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Book a Spring Walk

NYBG - forage class

I am delighted to be returning to the New York Botanical Garden on April 19th to teach a class about edible native plants.

We begin at 11AM with an image-heavy classroom presentation followed by a ramble in the beautiful Native Garden and Thane Family Forest, ending around 2PM with a shared, wild-inspired snack in the company of delectable early spring spicebush (shown above).

Booking is via the NYBG. For non members tickets are $85, for members, $79.

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Spring Forage Walks and Picnics

Honeysuckle - at home and abroad

It is Monday at No. 9 Constantia, my mother's house in Cape Town. And I have been picking fragrant Japanese honeysuckle flowers, still cool with dew.

It is interesting that they are in bloom again in late summer in the Southern Hemisphere. In New York I usually collect them in very early summer, around June.

It is hard to imagine that this coming Saturday I will be leading a wild walk around New York City's wintery Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, where we will see...the  same honeysuckle! - as invasive there as it is here. But it will certainly not be in bloom. The walk celebrates the end of dark afternoons as Daylight Saving time kicks in, and we will learn to identify lots of indigenous and exotic plants in their winter slumber stage. (There have been two cancellations, so join us if you are free and would like to learn the wild wonders of edible plants, and then taste them in a picnic.)

Today's Cape Town flowers are now macerating (for eight hours) in an unwooded Pinot Noir-Chardonnay blend, to make a late summer, site and season-specific vermouth (based on the recipe in Forage, Harvest, Feast). I have been collecting indigenous herbs for weeks and those infusions are now ready to be blended with this garden exotic. I have also been lucky enough to collect lots of elderflower and elderberry (on the shrubs at the same time!) - and will bring some elderberry syrup back to Brooklyn with me. It will definitely feature in Saturday's walk menu. Thinking hot soup...

I can't wait to see the Frenchman again, and am looking forward to checking in on the indoor citrus collection: There has been scale on the Thai lime (happens every late winter), and the Meyer lemon - repotted just before I left a month ago - is still rather poorly. I will know more once I see it. What I am not looking forward to is mass media panic about the new coronavirus. I am disgusted with news coverage of it in the US. It's like flu. Wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes. I just canceled my New York Times subscription due to their alarmist, and in my view, deeply irresponsible editorial coverage of it.

Moving along, if you'd like to see some other Cape Town adventures, visit my Instagram feed @66squarefeet - that's where the daily posts happen!

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Book a Spring Walk

Hiking in Cape Town: Silvermine

Gladiolus, somewhere between G. undulatus and G. monticola. 

[This post was first published on March 29th, 2009. After Googling a hike-time for Silvermine I landed up on my own blog. This post. Funny. Everything seen and documented ten years ago is true now, so I re-posted it.]

"The entire Cape Floristic Region averages 94 species per 1000 square km, making it much more diverse than any other part of the world. California and Southwestern Australia, two other Mediterranean regions, have respective average diversities of 14 and just under 12 species per 1,000 square km...Within the Cape Floristic Region, fynbos alone may contain between 150 and 170 species per 1,000 square km, an astonishing two or three times that measured for tropical rainforests..."

John Manning, Field Guide to Fynbos, 2007

Vince and I, two corgis and one black lab, set off from the eastern section of Silvermine, easily defined as lying on the eastern side of Ou Kaapse Weg, one afternoon after lunch at home. There are several possible routes one can follow from the car park, but we wanted a shortish walk of about three hours, and headed off towards the Amphitheatre*. I was relying on memory and an old map from Jose Berman's out-of-roint hiking book (circa 1976), but we should have had the up-to-date Slingsby's Silvermine Map.

* Confusingly, there are two Amphitheatres at Silvermine: One above Boyes Drive on the Kalk Bay (eastern) side, and the Amphitheatre Path around the reservoir (western side).

Slingsby's are excellent maps and I would encourage visitors to the Cape to purchase several (Table Mountain, Hout Bay, Cape Point) , and then use them. Very few tourists consider hiking proper (i.e. with backpacks, proper shoes and a MAP) when they come to the Cape Peninsula, and this omission deprives them of an unforgettably rich lifetime experience.

Table Mountain might look flat (or in our accent, flet) from the front, but it contains mountains within the mountain. The Table Mountain National Park itself extends right to the tip of the Cape Peninsula, with hundreds of hiking trails crisscrossing it, with plants and views unique to each.


Ah, Romulea, But you are not in Mr Manning's book. Growing almost flat on the sandy soil leading steeply up to the Amphitheatre, and as dense as gentians. Known as African bluebells.

For better ID'ing I have ordered Wild Flowers of Table Mountain, from England. Amazon had never heard of it. However Amazon did have Cape Peninsula: No. 3: South African Wild Flower Guide" by M.M. Kidd. A whopping $55. But I still have credit on my Christmas gift card. Thanks, Boss. Sold. So hopefully I will be saying "I think..." a little less often when it comes to plant names.

Pelargonium cucullatum, and the first and easiest I ever learned to recognize, as a twelve-year-old newly moved to the Cape from the grasslands of the Free State.

On a hill overlooking Ou Kaapse Weg, this Protea speciosa grew right next to the path.

I have seen these pelargoniums two years in a row now, in relative abundance beside these paths, growing out of dry sand banks, with leaves frizzled to nothing. I think they are P. pinnatum. What I love about these walks is that you see one flower for a few metres, and then another, and then more of the second, and so on, so that always there are localized pockets of something new. And this was a midsummer hike, not exactly the most floriferous time of year.

"At every step a different plant appeared; and it is not an exaggerated description, if it should be compared to a botanic garden...so great was the variety everywhere to be met with."

William Burchell, journal entry for the last week of November 1810.

Flax - Heliophila, no idea which species. And blooming late...it seemed to be a late year in general.

Thereianthus, and again not sure which one - the last time I walked here I saw them showing only their tantalizing drying stalks. With petals they are lovely!

This stunning, shrubby erica, dripping with waxy white and green blooms, grew on the path down into the Amphitheatre, just after False Bay had come into view. Sunbirds darted about, drinking their nectar. No luck ID'ing, as it does not seem to match the white ericas in my book.

Poor, short-legged corgis. I had told them the walk would be gentle. I had completely forgotten a steep, boulder-climbing section. Not having a collapsable water dish, we poured their water into one of the honeycombed sandstone boulders on the way. Here is Ted, slurping it up.

They said a lot in Welsh, and from the tone none of it apparently noy especially flattering to my person.

Lobelia, of course. L. coronopifolia.

Lachnaea grandiflora - mountain carnation, or bergangelier. They can also be pink. 

Polygala - butterfly bush.

Protea nitida, I think. For some reason I never paid much attention in the past to the proteas, most famous of the fynbos flowers. This one grew low down on a shrub about 8 feet high.

Back on the home stretch, Ben flopped into the pool above the waterfall.

And in the thicker, grassy vegetation behind the pool I found several more of these gladioli. The colouring looks like G. monticola but the form and habitat resembles more G. undulatus. Help.

Coming full circle. And home (10-minute drive) before dark. Obviating the necessity for a posse led by my father, which is what I found in the driveway the last time I returned, with Marijke, well after sunset, from this circuit.

Some hiking tips for visitors (and the first one I need to um, obey too. I hate hats):

1. Wear a hat or sunscreen. Our sun will burn a hole in you.

2. Take a sweater and a light waterpoof jacket no matter what the weather looks like. Up there is not like down here.

3. Take water and a snack

4. Tell someone exactly where you are going. Write it down.

5. Do not hike alone.

Mountain rescue: 021-937-0300 (updated February 2020)
More Mountain Rescue info

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February 2020: What happens in ten years? 

My father (23 November 2018), and Ben (9 March 2012) and Teddy (22 January 2020), are no more. 

I no longer have a boss to give me Christmas gift cards, and am my own. I also have far less time for ID'ing South African flowers. 

The Frenchman's generous vacations have shrunk as the flexible start-up he worked for become a publicly traded corporation. This year he spent six days in Cape Town, rather than weeks. He still works his tail off and I never forget it.

In ten years we moved three times, I made three gardens (aside from those designed for others, of course), and wrote two books. In November of that year I went for my first official forage walk, and now I lead my own.

Some things don't change. My hiking companion is still the love of life. And that life is good.

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Book a New York Spring Plant Walk

Grenadilla Mousse

Grenadillas are dropping off the vine at my mother's house, and in Cape Town supermarkets they are abundant and cheap. Time to make mousse!

Head over to 66 Square Feet (the Food) for my grenadilla mousse recipe.

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Book a Spring Forage Walk

Suddenly, it is summer

And just like that (snaps fingers), you are in another hemisphere. Another season. Another climate.

The dark afternoons become long, light evenings. Fog-shrouded and brown winter trees become rich green summer canopies, roaring like rivers in the wind. Brooklyn to Constantia, home to home, but neither, and never.

To anyone closely tuned to plants and to the minutely unfolding sequence of the changing seasons (botanist, farmer, forager, gardener, grower, seasonal eater) this sudden contrast - happening within 24 hours -  is as unnerving as it is miraculous.

I will be back in New York by very early spring, but for the southern summer month of February I am in changeable Cape Town. I landed in stifling heat, but as I type on this evening patio (where we ate by candlelight last night) in the lee of a cloud-shrouded mountain, it is now sweater-cold. On the other side of the mountain, facing the Atlantic, they are probably basking in the evening's golden sunlight.

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Book a New York Forage Walk