Spring tonic
Working in the garden…it’s early, really
early this year. Pruning last year’s
raspberry canes. Digging the quack grass
that snuck into the berry patch when we replaced the fence last fall….and I
notice that I’ve uprooted some prime dandelions….so I toss them aside while I
remove the quack grass and creeping campanula from the turned earth. After a while I think….oh, I’d better take
care of the dandelions before they dry out.
And I dig some more to round out the batch. I rinse the dirt off once outside, and scrub
the roots twice inside the house, removing all of the tops that have not wilted
yet. I cut the root into small
relatively uniform chunks and set them outside to dry for dandelion “coffee”. (Some of the depsides, flavour compounds in
roasted chicory root, and I presume dandelion root as well, are the same as the
compounds that flavour roasted coffee.
Naturally caffeine free.)
Then I turn my attention to the tops,
selecting relatively undamaged crowns, pulling off older damaged leaves. And then I think of my spring tonic on the
Skeena years ago….so I check the herb bed to see if the chives are up….and they
are! So I pull a handful of new chive tops in lieu of the nodding onion I used
to add to my stir-fry. I chop a half
jalapeño and some ginger root (definitely not locally sourced) and heat oil in
my wok (a mixture of grape seed and sesame), toss in the greens and
accompaniment, and stir-fry til they are bright green and wilted. I add slices of hard-boiled egg (those are
local, from the Farmer’s market), stir a bit longer, and eat my spring
tonic. Thank you dandelions and
chives. Spring blessing.
As I harvest, process, and eat, I think
about multi-species ethnography, research through practice, and "attending." I am reading the dissertation
of a young colleague who is writing about the stories of plants and
people. I’ve also been listening to
other colleagues at the recent ethnobiology conference in Tucson talking about
multi-species ethnography. So. Definitely “located knowledge” as the
dandelions are from my urban back yard.
Definitely I have been attending to the dandelions, and the ground where
they grow, for the 15 plus years I have lived on this 10 by 40 metre plot of
urban landscape. The raspberries are
leafing out. Already. At least three weeks before “normal”,
whatever that is in this time of progressive and stochastic change. The chives agree that spring is here. The maples have opened their flowers and the
honeysuckles and cotoneaster are also opening their leaves. The ground in the raspberry patch is graced
by clumps of glorious blooming purple violets.
They are spreading rapidly, apparently undamaged by the fencing
activities of the fall. In fact, they
began to bloom two weeks ago, at the beginning of April. First blossoms of spring. All of this in Edmonton, at latitude 53
North, in the Canadian prairies….
We read last night that this is the 11th
warmest month on record in a row, itself a record series. And this is global
temperatures, not an Alberta anomaly.
Climate change really is here, and all bets are off.
Enjoying spring. And crossing my fingers for the summer to
come.
Well, it's a few weeks later and my concerns were warranted. On May 1 a small brush fire on the outskirts of Fort McMurray blossomed into a huge inferno, burning more than 200,000 Hectares before cooler weather finally allowed fire fighters to begin to draw ahead. Not before some 1600 structures in the city burned, and 88,000 people had to be evacuated. Consequences of an unnaturally hot dry spring.....summer yet to come. Thank goodness cooler weather and some rain came. With climate change exceptional, unpredictable weather is the new normal.
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