Light

Iridescent lesser celandine (Ficaria verna). Loaded with sunshine.

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Escape in a Book

Forage Walks and COVID-19

[Updated 3/29/20: Unless we are given the all-clear (unlikely), April walks are cancelled]

For the curious and concerned, here is how things are, and our current drill at home:

🌷 For anyone who has purchased tickets for a walk, credit will be offered for any future walk in more normal times. If this is a hardship for you, or if you were coming from out of town I will issue a refund.

🧼 This is our preventive routine at home, and out and about (the Frenchman and I have always been slightly obsessive about common sense hygiene, but our normal measures have been ramped up):

🤲 Hands are sanitized if we are away from home, using a 70% ethyl alcohol gel. We do not touch our faces. We wash our hands the second we walk through the door.

💳 Anything store-purchased in containers or bags is first wiped down with sanitizing solution* on our landing - our new staging area before anything comes inside.  Our door handles and common surfaces are wiped down with the solution twice a day: taps, light switches, handles on anything that opens and shuts (including fridge, dishwasher and oven), credit cards, keys, and phones.

*1 tablespoon bleach to 16 fl oz/473 ml water in a spritz bottle.

⛑ Indoor surfaces touched by objects from the Outside are wiped down immediately with sanitizing solution. But we have that staging area.

🤛 There is no handshaking. Forget about hugging. And elbow bumps are better than fist bumps. But there is no emoji for an elbow bump. Yet. [Update: This seems quaint, now. That was before the six-foot rule.]

🌿 Foraged ingredients are gathered in clean places in clean bags by my clean hands. They are washed or cooked, as always.

For you at home? Pay attention to anything anyone has handled or touched at any point: Objects, delivered parcels, mail, money, door handles, shopping basket handles, so on. Shared surfaces are the enemy.

My personal feeling is that being outside* is the best antidote to stress. These are stressful times and stress is very harmful. Please do go out, walk, and find nature. It helps.

[* Poor South Africans are not allowed to exercise. This is very rough]

New York is blessed with big and small green spaces. Prospect Park and Central Park, of course, but Inwood Hill Park, Pelham Bay Park (the Bronx), Forest Park, Alley Pond Park (both in Queens), Mt Loretto Unique Area, and Conference House Park (the last two are on Staten Island) are my favorite wild refuges and places to stretch your legs.

Another unlikely therapy for stress is...the jigsaw puzzle! I discovered this quite by accident in Cape Town - this gorgeous $19.95 botanical illustration by Johannes Gessner cured a heart condition (serious arrhythmia) of three months that had befuddled cardiologists and cost thousands of dollars in testing (the tests revealed that I have a very strong heart!). It concentrates one's mind in uncertain times and blocks out the noise - real occupational therapy (my issue was probably embedded stress - family-related, triggered by an anniversary). I know, I'm off topic.

Here is Bug Slayer, from the the Elderberry chapter of Forage, Harvest, Feast. Timely. Three parts gin, 1 part each of elderberry cordial and fresh lime juice. Elderberry has antiviral properties.

If all goes as planned - and it may not - I will also be: In Inwood Hill Park for a Forest Revival on April 11th, at Green-Wood Cemetery for blossoms galore on April 18th, teaching at the New York Botanical Garden on April 19th, guiding an Earth Day Invasivore Walk on behalf of the Alley Pond Park Conservancy on April 22nd (just $10), leading a Between the Woods and Water walk at Pelham Bay on April 25th, and hosting an Edible Plant Blitz at Fort Tilden on May 16th. You can read more about the first and last two on my Forage Walks and Classes page.

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Book a Spring Walk

The state of things

Tell the trees to sneeze into their trunks. They have been frightening the flowers. Their leaves are dripping on the spring shoots. The buds are sniffling.

Lecture the breeze for blowing, there are droplets in the branches. Tell the birds to fold their wings, their flight is causing panic.

The bees should work at home.

Love bugs are gathering in unsafe numbers, heedless of warnings.

The squirrels keep touching their faces.

Ask the forysthia not to bloom, it is Asian and in the wrong place. The callery pears have weak crotches and are susceptible. Red maple buds are flouting recommendations. The daffodils are incontinent and the crocuses keep congregating.

Sanitize the chickweed, it is hugging the grass. The dandelions look damp. The germination of seedlings is inadvisable.

Mask the winter honeysuckle; it can be smelled from unsafe distances. 

Find the earthworms, they have not reported and may have gone underground. The robins have been asking.

Secure the compost heap - steam has been seen.

There is a general, and alarming greening. A statement will be issued.

The moon is still traveling, despite warnings. Find her and tether her. (She may require meals at home.)

Moths will be fine.

Magnolias will open, regardless.

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Seriously, Come and Walk

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