wild roses

I walk with wild roses through the green
while the crystal globes of the dandelions shed their seeds on the wind
the birds dance in the air above the lapping stream
and the rustle of the poplar leaves is threaded with birdsong

The wild roses are blooming in the ravine, sweet heady scent.  After the rain, the ground is soft and dark, and the green burgeoning.  Most things have recovered now from early heat and drought, though it looks like there will be no hazelnuts this year.  The creek flooded from the heavy rains in the past two weeks and the lower trail is sticky with thick mud and logs drifted across the path.

I always think of my mother at this time of year.  The wild roses bloom around her birthday, June 6.  Things are a bit early this year....I saw three yellow warblers, like impossibly bright moving flowers, dart among the green leaves as I walked, a blast of complex interwoven trajectories, like celtic knotwork in motion– then gone from sight.

Seasons. Connections. Memories.

Spring Tonic

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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 11^th 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.

Spring Greens

Oconaluftee River, Cherokee, North Carolina

I just got back from the Society of Ethnobiology conference which was held in Cherokee North Carolina this year, in the southern Appalachians.  David Cozzo, who was one of the meeting organizers, led our fieldtrip into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  He was describing Cherokee plant uses and ethnobotany to us, and slipped in various comments about spring edibles....tender tips of cat briar (Smilax sp.) were one edible David pointed out.  Violet leaves were another.  Today I got back out into my garden to try to clean up the perennial beds, digging out the tenacious roots and shoots of the creeping bellflower Campanula repens, an aggressive European species combining the worst of quackgrass with dandelions in the structure and depth of its roots, which infests my beds.  While digging out the campanula, I dug out some large dandelions in the same spade-fulls.  At that point I remembered that my friend Riva wanted to try to make dandelion root coffee, and I decided to dig her enough roots to try it.  (Organic and local....) My raspberry patch has quite a few old large dandelion plants among the berry plants.  I don't ordinarily till it, so they have been growing undisturbed for quite a while.  I took the spading fork in there and managed to dig out a bunch of plants with good roots. While I was digging, my friend Riva came over.  I snapped the crowns off the roots, and put the root pieces in one bowl and the tops in another.

When we took them inside to wash the roots, Riva said, "Can't you eat the tops too?"  They were larger and more open grown that dandelions I usually pick for spring greens, but the flowers still hadn't opened in my yard.  I washed the bowlful of tops in several changes of water and left them soaking when we went for a walk.  When we came back, the tops had perked up quite a bit, and I thought, well, maybe we should make a spring stir-fry with them.

When I lived on the Skeena River in BC, I would pick tender semi-shade grown leaves of dandelion, some tops of the wild nodding onion (Allium cernuum), and if possible some morrel mushrooms, and make them into a dark and flavourful stir-fry, with tamari and sesame oil.  The bitter greens taste good with the salty soy and flavourful oil, and feel very healthy as the first fresh greens.  In fact we used to call it our first greens feast, by analogy to the first salmon feast traditionally held by the Gitksen 15 km upriver in Gitwangak.
Though I was uncertain of the quality of the tops today, I decided to try them.  I enjoyed the southern collards cooked with bacon on my trip, so thought, why don't I try cutting some bacon and fry the greens in the bacon grease?  The bacon I have is from Irving's Farm Fresh, a heritage Berkshire pork producer in central Alberta who sells at the Strathcona Farmer's Market.  Since it was to be our dinner, I decided to cut a couple of chicken tenders and marinate them in tamari (gluten free for me now) and sesame oil.  Riva finds onions don't agree well, so I grated fresh ginger instead. I took the opportunity to cook quinoa to go with the stir-fry; I rinse the grain once in water to rinse out some of the saponins before I boil it (2 parts water to one part quinoa). For the main course, I took out my little Indian wok.  I started out cooking several thick meaty slices of the bacon, cut into strips, for the grease.  Then I tossed in a sliced brown crimini mushroom, and the chicken breast with the marinade and stirred in the wok for a couple of minutes, and finally added the dandelion tops, which I had cut up into sections a couple centimeters broad.  I cooked the mix until the dandelion tops had all wilted and the breast meat was cooked, and served it over the quinoa.  We sat at the table on the back deck overlooking the garden and enjoyed the flavour of the spring in our bowls and the gentle green of the opening leaves in the yard.  It was completely delicious. The first spring meal from my small plot of urban land. Our dinner tonight only used half of the tops, so we have another good meal in store.  I'll have to report back later on the dandelion root coffee. There should be about a pound of roots to roast and prepare.