i received this bouquet last night from a dinner guest who also happens to be a beloved friend. “thank you, martha,” i thought to myself, as she handed me the flowers, and i handed her a glass of champagne. “you have just saved me from having to forage for a still blog image tomorrow.” of course those were willow leaves, and of course, i mean of course, those were sweet pea flowers. i almost didn’t look them up, before i wrote this caption. because, i mean, of course. but then i googled sweet pea flowers. and then i googled purple sweet pea pods, and suddenly, as often happens in nature, i was lost without a compass. nothing looked quite like this plant or its flowers and pods. but somewhere several pages into a sweet pea google search, somebody had posted a cranberry colored seed pod, and called it hyacinth bean vine, and several minutes later i was feeling both relieved at having taken nothing for granted, and sheepish about the vastness of botany, and the puniness of my grasp on it.
bouquet of willow and hyacinth bean vine (??)
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in one week we will be on an airplane somewhere over the atlantic. tonight, over an eight hour goodbye dinner full of conversation and friends, we came as close to regretting our departure as we probably ever will.
unidentified woodland mushrooms
saint paul, minnesota
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I’m going to pretend I didn’t see this. I’m not ready.
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Now now. I can’t wait!
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i just had a conversation the other night with a local chef who has spent his life studying native cuisine, and is about to open a restaurant in minneapolis that will focus on indigenous ingredients and cooking methods. of course bison will be on the menu. but my favorite part of his story had to do with salt. i frankly never wondered to myself how native americans found salt, or even if they used salt at all. but there was salt everywhere in the wild, if you knew where to look. we’ve all heard the term salt marsh. well, that was one source of salt. the plants in a salt marsh pulled salt from the soil so effectively that the salt actually crystallized on their stalks, and could be wiped off into waiting vessels, and kept for seasoning food. sometimes i think i want to live for a thousand years, so i can keep hearing stories like that about the world.
bison horns
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by the time he could walk, my son had mastered a particular kind of pout that was so sad and effective, it was a kind of genius. he wouldn’t throw a tantrum, and he wouldn’t argue. he would just not get his way, and then he would let his arms fall limp at his sides, and walk away very, very slowly, staring straight ahead until he disappeared around the nearest corner. we would wait for him to disappear, and then try very hard not to let him hear our laughter.
yellow cone flower
saint paul, minnesota
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Our gardening ancestor Thomas Jefferson planted the purple hyacinth vine at Monticello. I sure hope I remember that correctly. Oh dear
That is, indeed, hyacinth bean. I’ve been growing it for years here in Texas. I’ve read that people in Asia eat the beans but I’ve never tried them.