a moment of beautiful – old-fashioned flowers
the space: the side of a cottage in the late summer sun
the beautiful: a riot of Golden Glow, leaning against the wall
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Last week, on a drive along the South Branch of the Oromocto River, I noticed the fall flowers have taken over from the summer species. The fields are filled with Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) and the ditches with Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea (L.) C.B. Clarke). In some of the yards were three flowers I think of as ‘old fashioned’ – French Marigolds (Tagetes patula L.), Hollyhock (Alcea spp.), and Golden Glow (Rudbeckia laciniata (L.) var. Hortensia). I love the orange of the Marigolds, the papery pinks and purples of the Hollyhock, and how the Golden Glow leans!
These plants were my first introduction to the concepts of ‘annual’, ‘biennial’ and ‘perennial’. The French Marigold was an annual, and grew only for a single year. The Hollyhock was a biennial (although some are weak perennials), living a year without flowers and then blooming in the second year. The Golden Glow came up year after year without benefit of seeds or fuss, a perennial.
I remember helping my Mom collect seeds so she would always have the Hollyhocks and French Marigolds. If I close my eyes, I can see my hand holding the pointy black French Marigold seeds and the flat Hollyhock seeds with their furry edges.
When we first built our house, I was anxious to have these plants in my garden, but after blooming for a few years at the edge of the house, the Golden Glow died out, and I could never get Hollyhocks to flower. Both need lots of sun and we have only shade to offer. I often grow French Marigolds. I still have the seeds I collected from our first garden here, stuffed in an old metal seed box. I doubt they are still viable, but when I open the box, I see the seeds of the Marigolds that bloomed here 32 years ago!
The seeds I collected from our first garden of Marigolds in 1980… they are kept in an antique box marked ‘St. Albans England – Ryders Seed – D.P.’ Ryders was a seed company operated in England beginning in the 1890s. It sold seed in ‘penny packets’ to be affordable for everyone.
What are your favorite ‘old-fashioned’ flowers and do you see them much anymore?
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Pearly Everlasting
Anaphalis margaritacea L.
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Pearly Everlasting
sign of summer’s passing
yet – immortelle
picked by the road
by the armload
hung from rafters
children’s laughter
runs beneath
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downy leaf, wooly stem
white diadem
perfectly matched flowers
thatched in gold
dry and old
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Linnaeus named
for Marguarite
memory sweet
paper petals keep
pale perfume
summer grace
in a winter room
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Published as: ‘Pearly Everlasting’, The Antingonish Review 92, 1993
Copyright Jane Tims 2012
growing and gathering – value
These days I am working to complete my manuscript of poems on the subject of ‘growing and gathering’ local foods.
As I sort my poems, I find several are about the ‘value’ of wild plants as food.
Sometimes this value is simple value for money. Every cup of blueberries I pick is one I don’t have to buy. When I pick enough berries to freeze, I can have blueberries or blackberries when they cost a fortune to buy fresh at the store. I am also bringing the warm summer and its memories forward into the chill of winter.
A few of my poems focus on the value of substitution. For example, I will never run out of tea leaves for my daily tea break. I have Pineapple Weed, Sorrel and Sweet-fern teas to make. Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law, and my own little herb garden, I have a rack of fresh herbs drying, including Camomile and several varieties of Mint. If I run out of salad ingredients, I have a stash of salad greens just outside my door.
Storage is the subject matter of a few of my poems. When I was young, my Mom showed us how to collect Spruce Gum from the trees for a sticky but tasty chew. During my project, I learned that some woodsmen make little wooden boxes for the gum, to keep it for later use. I also have a few poems about making jelly and jam.
Thinking about the value of food, I can’t forget the people for whom growing and gathering local foods is an occupation, not just a ‘hobby’. I have written poems about the people who sell shad and fiddleheads and lobster from their roadside trucks, about children who earn their summer money by picking and selling berries, and, of course, about the farmer.
Last but not least, there is just the joy of finding or producing and eating your own food. I always say, the best part of a home garden is the taste of the first carrot or the snap of the first wax bean!
What do you think is the greatest value associated with growing and gathering local foods?
Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.© Jane Tims 2012
Sea-rocket (Cakile edentula Hook.)
Sea-rocket, also known as Seaside Mustard and caquillier in French, is found on sandy or gravelly beaches along the coast.
Cakile is a sprawling plant with succulent, branched stems. The leaves are thick and fleshy, with blunt-toothed margins. The four-petalled flowers are small, purple and located at the tip of the stem.
The name Sea-rocket comes from the distinctive shape of the seed pods. These have a narrow base and a pear-shaped tip, like a rocket. Cakile is an old Arabic name and edentula means ‘without teeth’.
Sea-rocket is edible. It has a hot, pungent taste, similar to radish. The stems, leaves and pods can be added to salads or boiled for 5 to 10 minutes to give a milder taste.
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Cakile wind
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the beach sizzles today
the breeze a peppered wind
the sand Cakile-hot
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wind scours the shore-bands
of seaweed – rockweed, kelp
bleaches them, crisped and dry
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sand dries, adheres to skin
brushes away, a rub
a sandpaper polish
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the tongue too hot for words
the seas too salt for tears
tans ruined, scorched and red
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© Jane Tims 2012
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Warning:
1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.a snippet of landscape – moose habitat
Not far from Gagetown, on Route 102 in New Brunswick, is an interesting bit of wetland. Sometimes there is water in this small area but more often it is just wet mud. During periods of little rain, the mud becomes cracked and dry. The area never seems to grow any of the grasses or other wetland plants typical of wet areas.
The reason can be discovered through two pieces of evidence. The first thing you notice about the area is… the mud is carved with the tracks of a large animal. The second thing you notice is the Moose Crossing sign not far away, along the highway.
I have seen a moose in this muddy place. It is a dangerous place for a moose to be hanging out, because it is so near the road.
Moose visit these muddy areas for several reasons. They need water, of course. Also, salts from the road accumulate and moose use the wet areas as ‘licks’ to replenish their body salts. Sometimes these waters are naturally high in salt content.
We have seen moose quite often this summer. We watched a moose and her calf for about a half an hour during our trip to the Cranberry Lake area in July.
a moose and her calf
the moose sent her calf into the woods to hide and grazed quite a while, only a little concerned by us
Do you see moose where you are?
© Jane Tims 2012
growing and gathering – a sense of place
The theme of eating local foods has its essence in the idea of ‘place’. The book ‘The 100 Mile Diet – A Year of Local Eating’ by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (2007), introduced many to the idea of eating foods grown within a certain radius of home. Eating local is also place-based in terms of the settings we associate with local foods – the woods, the blueberry field, the home garden, the local farm, the roadside stand, and, of course, the farmers market are all places associated with obtaining food from local sources.
‘Place’ is a complex topic. Most of my poems about ‘growing and gathering’ include at least a little information about the ‘place’ where foods are found. Some poems, however, are specifically about ‘place’, and I want to group these together in my manuscript.
The poems I will include under the theme of ‘place’ will be focused on habitat, landscape, local food traditions, and the people-based concept of ‘home’.
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1. the ‘place’ where plants grow
Plants, of course, depend on their habitat to live. The ideal ‘place’ for a plant is determined by the availability of moisture, light and nutrients. These factors are, in part, the result of climate, soil type, slope, exposure, and interactions with other plants and animals. In my collection, I have poems about the habitat of seaside plants, the need for water in landscapes where water is scarce, and why woodland plants often bloom in the early spring, when light is most available.
2. plants shape their surroundings and their landscape
Plants create habitat, modifying the regimes of moisture, light and nutrients in a local space. Plants also help to create the broader landscape. I have poems about how ripening apples change the space under an apple tree, how large and small-scale characteristics affect the value of a property, and how plants contribute to the way landscape appears.
3. ‘place-based’ food traditions
As a result of the interaction between wild life and the landscape, people have access to different kinds of foods and develop area-specific wild food traditions. In New Brunswick, fiddleheads of the Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia Struthiopteris (L.) Todaro) are abundant in the spring, along the banks of rivers and wetlands, and many New Brunswickers consider a feed of cooked fiddleheads to be a rite of spring. In Newfoundland, a relative of the blackberry, the Bakeapple (Rubus Chamaemorus L.), is common in the bogs and barrens. Children often stand beside the road, their arms out-stretched, to sell their bottles of yellow Bakeapples packed in water. I have poems about these two local foods as well as others about traditional local foods.
4. ‘place’ as a metaphor for home
Plants and their ‘place’ can be a metaphor for the relationships between humans and the spaces where they are raised, or where they live. ‘Place’ may imply ‘home’ and ideas of belonging or familiarity. Several of my poems are about this aspect of ‘place’.
As I am working on the theme of ‘place’, a song by the 1990’s band Toad the Wet Sprocket is going around in my head:
‘…show me your home
Not the place where you live
But the place where you belong…’
Toad the Wet Sprocket, ‘Something to Say’, Fear, 1991
Exploring the theme of ‘place’ with you has helped me to organise my poems, to revise them, and to understand that I still have a few poems to write toward my manuscript. I am so grateful for this blog and for all my readers!
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landscape
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a veil draped across bones of the earth
pointed tents supported by forest
settles in pockets, lichens and moss
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beneath the cloth is texture, the way
I know life on the land, fast or slow,
near or far, through clear eyes or through tears
~
to know form follows function – practice
repeated, detailed observation
see the sweep of a field of brambles
also the berries, also the thorns
~
Published as ‘landscape’ on www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com September 3, 2011
Revised
© Jane Tims 2012
a botany club excursion
Earlier this summer, we went on a hike with other members of a local botany club to the Cranberry Lake Protected Natural Area, an area protected for its extensive forest community of Red Oak and Red Maple.
The New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources website describes the Cranberry Lake Protected Natural Area as follows:
An extensive Red Oak forest community. Predominantly Red Oak – Red Maple association. Red Oak make up a large percentage of the regeneration, most likely the Oak component will increase as the stand matures. The individual trees are impressive size.
This type of forest is rare in New Brunswick.
The woods were open with a thick understory of Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum (L.) Kuhn, var. latiusculum (Desv.) Underw. ex A. Heller), Blueberry (Vaccinium spp.), Common Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule Aiton) and some of the other species of the Canadian Element associated with woodlands in the Maritimes (see my post for April 30, 2012, Trailing Arbutus, https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/trailing-arbutus-epigaea-repens-l-var-glabrifolia/ ).
My husband standing in the thick growth of Bracken… it was about waist-height… he says he was standing in a hole!
It was so much fun working with the other botanists and enthusiasts to identify the various species we encountered. The plant lists prepared during the day will be part of an effort by Nature New Brunswick to update a database of Environmentally Significant Areas in New Brunswick. During my years of work, I was privileged to work on the development and use of this database.
I saw many familiar species during the hike, but I was so excited to see three plants I have not seen in a while.
I renewed my acquaintance with Witch-hazel, Hamamelis virginiana L. (notice the asymmetrical shape of the leaves)…
and Shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica Nutt.), identifiable by its thick oval leaves, longer than the leaf-stalks or petioles…
a single plant of Shinleaf, with its straight stem of small creamy flowers, growing among Blueberry, and Red Maple and Red Oak seedlings
I also was introduced to a plant I thought I had never seen before, Cow-wheat (Melampyrum lineare Lam., a branchy variety found in dry woods). When I looked it up in my Flora, though, I found a notation to say I had seen this plant in the summer of 1984. It is always good to record the plants you see and identify!
While there, we saw a perfect example of the interaction of species. A bright orange fungus, known as Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus), growing on an aged Red Oak, was being consumed by a horde of slugs.
A hike with a group is a great way to expand your knowledge and boost your confidence. Everyone benefits from the knowledge of the various participants, and being with like-minded people is good for the soul!
© Jane Tims 2012
Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.growing and gathering – learning
When I embarked on my project to write poetry about ‘growing and gathering’, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the subject. It is not surprising, then, to find I have written quite a few poems on the theme of ‘learning’.
Some of these poems are in the spirit of ‘how to’. I have poems about collecting maple syrup, making jelly, harvesting and preparing wild sarsaparilla, stringing peas in the garden, gathering eggs and picking fiddleheads, among others. As poems can be a little obtuse, sometimes these directions are not very helpful in a practical way. However, I try to capture the essence of the growing and gathering of local foods.
I have also written poems about learning itself. I have a poem about my childhood experience of running free on the prairie, picking thorny cactus berries and bottles of scorpions (yes, scorpions… they were interesting and pretty, and I didn’t know they were dangerous!). I also have a poem to remind busy young mothers to learn from the rhythms of nature – the calm conspiring of bees and clovers to make honey, or the way a bird collects the makings of a nest, a little at a time. Another poem is about learning how to negotiate the traditions of the farmers market (if you buy fresh carrots, keep the green tops for your compost bin!!!).
I also have two poems about imitating nature. In the 1960s, my Mom used to make a few substitutions in her cooking to make up for a lack of ingredients. You have probably seen these recipes before: Apple Pie, No Apples and Mock Cherry Pie.
One of the reasons Mom made these recipes was to have some fun and make us laugh. But fake food is no laughing matter. My goal, in part, has been to show that we are now a little distanced from our food and its sources. By considering what wild foods might still be available, I have tried to get others to think about the source of our food and the greater simplicity of eating local.
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Apple Pie, No Apples
Prepare pastry for a double pie
Break 15 salted soda crackers into wedge-shaped pieces and place in the unbaked pie shell
Bring to a boil:
1 1/2 cups water 1 1/4 cups white sugar 4 tbsp. margarine 3/4 tsp. cinnamon 1 tsp. cream of tartar 1 tsp lemon flavoringPour mixture over crackers
Cover with pastry
Bake as for apple pie
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Mock Cherry Pie
Prepare pastry for a double pie
Fill pie shell with:
2 cups fresh cranberries 1 cup raisins 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 tbsp. flour 1 cup cold water 1 1/2 tsp. vanillaCover with a lattice of pastry.
Bake as for cherry pie
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Mock Cherry Pie
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I am not easy to fool –
embellished covers, empty pages
‘baby’ carrots, shapened like pencils
knock-off purses, no money inside
diet soda and servings of fries
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who else would look
under the lattice crust
to discover cranberries and raisins?
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cherries in the orchard
never picked
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© Jane Tims 2012
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Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant.~
Blueberries!
I love blueberries and so I am very happy – our blueberries are blue and ready for the picking at our summer property.
There are two ways to pick blueberries, with your hands…
or with a rake…
My husband bought me my rake years ago, so I use it when there are lots of berries and most are ripe. There is a bit of a knack to harvesting with a rake. The ripe blueberries are loosened and captured with the tines of the rake. The basic technique is to sweep the surface of the bushes, tipping the rake upward as you sweep, since the ripe berries fall into a tine-less part of the pan. The experience of raking berries is very different from picking. The process is less calm, although you do get into a rhythm. Also, the tines of the rake vibrate as you sweep, making a lovely musical sound!
We compared the yields between picking and raking, and we get about five times as many berries per unit effort with the rake (I am sure professional rakers do much better than this). The rake gets lots of leaves and debris along with the berries, so the time saved in raking instead of picking is lost in the cleaning (in a professional operation, the debris is removed with fans or another sorting method).
Although we have lots of berries on the property, they are getting fewer each year because the growth of other vegetation crowds the blueberry bushes. But we have a backup plan!
We also travel to the southern part of the province where the berries are in full production this time of year. Our preferred place to get blueberries by the box or by the pie is in Pennfield, at McKay’s Wild Blueberry Farm Stand.
We eat most of our own blueberries almost immediately. They also freeze very well. Our favorite way to use the berries is by making Blueberry Dumplings.
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Blueberry Dumplings
two to three cups of fresh blueberries 1/2 cup of water 2 tbsp. of sugar (more if you prefer a sweeter dish) ~Bring the berries, sugar and water to a boil.
When the mixture is bubbling, turn down the heat.
Dumplings:
1 cup flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tbsp. of shortening, cut into the flour/baking powder mixture 1 tsp. sugar 1/2 cup milk ~Mix well and add by spoonfuls to the top of the cooking blueberries.
Cover the pan tightly with a lid (otherwise, you will have a blue-spattered stove).
Cook at low for about 12-15 minutes or until dumplings are fluffy and done in the middle.
Enjoy!
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raking blueberries
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the sweep of the rake, the berry
touch, the ring of the tines
vibrato in blue, duet with the wind
in the whispering pines
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© Jane Tims 2012
Warning: 1. never eat any plant if you are not absolutely certain of the identification; 2. never eat any plant if you have personal sensitivities, including allergies, to certain plants or their derivatives; 3. never eat any plant unless you have checked several sources to verify the edibility of the plant. ~One Lovely Blog
This will be a different kind of post!
I have been nominated for the ‘One Lovely Blog Award’.
Thanks very much to ‘sunontiepost’ at www.sunontiepost.wordpress.com for nominating me for this award! Sunontiepost, aka ‘choosing words to choose worlds’, writes direct, hard-hitting poetry about many things, but often about dealing with the complications of diabetes.
I would like to nominate the following very nicely presented blogs, by some very talented people, for this award. I hope you visit them and enjoy their posts as much as I do:
http://carolsteel5050.blogspot.com/
http://leafandtwig.wordpress.com/
http://robbyrobinsjourney.wordpress.com/
http://snowbirdpress.wordpress.com
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Seven possibly unknown things about me:
- I am very messy but extremely well organized…is this even possible?
- My earliest memory is of my Mom teaching me ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
- One of my favorite possessions is a little carved wooden cat, given to me by my son.
- My favorite poets are Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, and Sara Teasdale.
- My favorite color is green.. oh and purple…no, red…except for orange, my absolute favorite… and then there is blue…..
- The first movie I ever saw was ‘Tarzan’ with my Dad (Tarzan the Ape Man, 1959).
- My best friends are my husband, my sister and my son, as well as my two brothers, and all my sister- and brother-in-laws, not in any particular order. Also my nieces and nephews. Also all the friends who are not related to me. I have really got myself into trouble with this item #7.
The Rules of Acceptance:
- Thank the person/people who nominated you and link back to them in your post:
- Share seven possibly unknown things about yourself.
- Nominate fifteen or so bloggers you admire.
- Contact the chosen bloggers to let them know and link back to them
Thank you so much to all the blogs mentioned above for making my life more and more interesting. Jane
poisonous Lathyrus – when ‘wild’ plants are not edible
Yesterday, August 1, 2012, I posted a description of the Beach Pea (Lathyrus japonicus Willd.) and said the peas could be collected, boiled and eaten. This is the advice of the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants (1977). My further reading, from more up to date sources, says you should not eat the seeds of Beach Pea or other species of wild pea. Many Lathyrus species contain a neurotoxin that can lead to a condition called lathyrism, a type of paralysis. Although there are other guides saying that Beach Pea is edible in small quantities, I have revised the post to remain on the safe side.
When we choose to include wild plants in our diets, it is very important to know for certain they will not be harmful. In my posts, I have talked about avoiding berries that may look pretty to eat, but contain toxins (for example the bright blue berries of Clintonia (see my post for May 23, 2012, ‘Bluebead Lily’ https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/bluebead-lily-clintonia-borealis-ait-raf/ ) or the tomato-like berries of the Common Nightshade (see my post for July 16, 2012, ‘growing and gathering – barriers to eating wild foods’ https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/growing-and-gathering-barriers-to-eating-wild-foods/ ).
I have also talked about cases in history of people who risk eating poisonous plants when hunger or famine strike. An example is the making of Missen Bread in Scandinavia, using a long complicated process designed to remove the burning, poisonous crystals contained in the roots of the Wild Calla (see my post for June 4, 2012, ‘keeping watch for dragons #6 – Water Dragon’ https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/keeping-watch-for-dragons-6-water-dragon/ ). Poisonous species of Lathyrus (for example Lathyrus sativus, the Grass Pea), in the same genus as the Beach Pea, have been used throughout history for food when people are desperate, in times of drought, famine or poverty.
So, please, take the following steps before you ingest any wild plant:
1. check out as many sources as you can find, to discover the current wisdom and science about ingesting a plant
2. be certain of your identification – many plants look very similar to one-another and can be confused
3. think about your own sensitivities, since you may react to foods that do not bother other people.
4. when in doubt, take the route of caution and safety and do not eat
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© Jane Tims 2012
