streets of gold

It’s roadside sunflower season! From here on out our roadsides here in the North will keep getting more and more golden as our 18 (!) native goldenrods come online. As the sun starts to get lower in sky, and lights it all up, it will look like our streets are edged in gold.

roadside Common Sunflower buds (Helianthus annuus)

time of harvest

Today Joseph and I went for breakfast at a local diner, and stopped to harvest mustard plants on the way home. Joe has been keeping an eye on the roadside wild mustards so he could harvest the seeds and make his own mustard. We found a generous patch along a little used frontage road. Once home, Joe spent about an hour separating the tiny (1-2 mm) seeds from chaff using his thumb, and then winnowed away the remaining chaff debris using a fan. It worked remarkably well. The seeds, from arms length look a uniform brown in the bottom of the bowl. But if you pull them closer, it’s a whole different story.

Tomorrow we make mustard. I’ve done it once before. It is remarkably easy to do.

hand harvested black mustard seeds (Brassica nigra)

still at it

Welcome to August! I have my head deep into my keynote. My son is harvesting first year burdock roots to dry and store to use as a bittering agent in his homemade amari (bittersweet herbal liqueurs). So you get burdock root. See you tomorrow. :-)

burdock roots (Arctium lappa)

dianthus for the distracted

In a couple of weeks I am heading to Longwood Garden near Philadelphia, PA to be one of several instructors at a week long photography conference. These are the kinds of things I get invited to do now ever since the success of my book. Anyway, I am not only teaching for three days but I am also giving the keynote speech. Today, I sat down in earnest to begin the laborious task of putting together what I hope to be a memorable keynote. As a result, I reached for the easy dianthus in a bouquet of flowers I was gifted recently. When time of short, work with you got. Even if it’s non-native and store bought.

pink dianthus

STILL worthy x 2

Soon after I started STILL in 2012 it became a family affair. Every outing turned into a treasure hunt for STILL. The kids would find something interesting, like a cicada husk, and wonder if I wanted it for STILL. We quickly quickly created our own shared language: “Hey Mom, is this STIL worthy?” they would ask. And just like that, “STILL worthy” was part of the Hoffman Family lexicon. We still use it to this day: “Hey Hon, I think the elderflower berries are going to be STILL worthy in a day or two” or, from my son “These sour cherries are STILL worthy, too bad I am have to process them all tonight before you can photograph them.” And in my own head: “tiger lilies are worthy of at least STILL posts”–STILL worthy x 2.

Tiger Lily flowers (Lilium lancifolium)