wild, native. and edible

this tiny little tamarack looking forest is growing right outside my front door. on my front stoop, matter of fact. my husband, steve, is hell bent on turning our suburban yard into a northern foragers paradise. anything and everything native, and edible, is being planted. there’s no plan. no rhyme or reason. we’ve got wild ramps here. here. and here. we have blueberries over there. raspberries everywhere. because, raspberries. stinging nettle on the side, beside the fiddleheads. mushroom spored logs over there. hazelnut trees up the hill, and now, asparagus seedlings on the front step. my husband is what you might call a man driven by his deep and fleeting passions. this year it’s edible native plants. hopefully, next year’s passion will be “care and maintenance of edible native plants”, or even “harvesting and preserving native edible plants.” unfortunately, that kind of logic does not usually prevail. we live on water. i am holding my breath for boat building.

baby asparagus shoots

one floret is not like the other

the genus name for lilac is syringa. i had heard and seen people refer to syringa trees, mostly in literature, and never knew they were referring to lilac until a few years ago. while lilac is itself a beautiful word, i find syringa even more so, with a whiff of something levantine and aromatic. furthermore, did you know there are such things as siryngariums? beautiful lilac zoos? sometimes i fret about the state of the world. but then i learn there are siryngariums, and i let myself exhale.

lilac blossoms (Syringa)

sometimes your plans have to change

i spent some time this winter sorting my STILL portfolio by color for a project i was working on. in doing so, i noticed that i had very few photos of lilacs. which is crazy, given how abundant and symbolic they are to our northern spring. so, i made big plans. this may, i was going to photograph lilacs as much and as often as i could. i was going to try my mightiest to capture both their sheer abundance, and their individual delicate beauty. i would have days, even weeks, to do it, and there would be no problem with supply because every yard, roadside, and park in the twin cities has lilac bushes. then, as they say, shit happened. we had an early warm spell, followed by a cold snap. a deadly combination for early budding blossoms. lilac flowers have been paltry, and the the ones that did survive look a little worse for wear. so, my plans were dashed. this weekend i plan to check out on last possible source–a park near me that is quite literally a dedicated lilac park. it has hundreds of bushes, in dozens of colors. i am guessing it was planted with every variety of lilac that grows in minnesota. we’ll see what i can come up with for subjects. unless, of course, it snows.

lilac florettes

young and old

while the new mullein are cocky knee-high leafy rosettes, this old veteran is still hanging around to keep an eye on the youngsters.  mullien is one of those plants i mentioned earlier this week, that grows from the ground to 2-3 meters tall in one short northern growing season.  i can almost feel the sympathetic pain just imagining what is might must feel like to grow 6 feet in three months.

mullein (Verbascum)

a war effort of photosynthesis

5 months of the year it is brown in the north. and 5 months of the year it is green. and in between we get one month of pastel colored spring blossoms, and one month of jewel-toned fall leaves. as we leave may and head into june, things will be pretty much full-on green. yes, there are plenty of flowers, and i will seek them out and post them, but their presence will be tiny in comparison to the flood of green that will threaten to drown the feeble lights of their bright colors. the amount of photosynthesis that is happening in this corner of the globe, at this time, is mind boggling.

nasturtium leaves