Little Forager

I was quite the little forager when I was a kid. I remembered the shape of any plant that I heard was edible and I looked for it everywhere. Unfortunately, I never knew the “real” names of most of my favorite delicacies. Recently, I decided to try and find a few of them.

First, there were my very favorites, “sweet-tarts”, as my friends and I called them. They were the best, because you could find them almost any time there wasn’t snow on the ground. They were darling little shamrock-like plants, with heart-shaped leaves and tiny yellow blossoms. The flavor was delicately lemony then softly sweet. They were most emphatically NOT clovers. I made the mistake of trying to eat clover leaves only once. They tasted like grass. Bitter, nasty, green grass. I discovered that their official name is Yellow Mount Sorrel and you can even cook with them!

 

I must say a word in defense of clovers. Though their leaves were truly horrid, their flowers were heavenly! I loved pulling out the pink-purple flower bits and nibbling the white inside ends off, which were dewy with nectar. The deeper the color on the flower, the better it tasted!

I also tried digging up Queen Anne’s Lace and eating the roots. In my experience, they were almost always tough as an old shoe and only slightly carroty, tasting more like dirt than anything else. But.. y’know. If you’re a kid, just eating something you picked yourself is enough to add flavor.

Then, there were the berries. Plump and juicy, bitter or sweet, but always a most special late summer treat.

There were the furry “rose-raspberries” or “carpet-berries” that burst in your mouth like a dying caterpillar and had a slightly fermented flavor… aka Thimbleberries, or so says our great guru, the World Wide Web.

Then, of course, there were choke cherries. People told stories about them being poisonous-which no kid I knew believed. Although, the wood of the tree even smelled evil! If you broke off a branch, the air would fill with a slight sour odor, closely resembling vomit. The ripe black berries tasted quite good, especially once you acquired a taste for them. The red ones, however, could make you quite violently ill. I witnessed that firsthand, around the time of my tenth birthday.  Some of my friends and I had been daring each other to eat the bright red fruit, because it literally numbs your tongue momentarily on contact. Let’s just say… they ate a few too many and their mothers all called asking what I had done to them. I suppose that it probably didn’t help matters in the suspicion department that I was the only one who wasn’t sick; I guess I didn’t eat enough to hurt me.

Please note: I do not own any of the images in the above post. They are curtesy of a Google Image search and the wonderful photographers who took these shots.

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Shopping for Jeans? An Ethical Report Card

Use this chart to find out how ethical different brands are when you go shopping for your next pair of jeans. The higher the number, the better their ethics.

The credit/source for this is Ethical Consumer.

I would also like to let you know, I just sent out an email to Lee Jeans, inquiring about their Fair Trade policy. I will update you, when/if I get a response.

Fair Trade Clothing

 

I’ve been reading the book, “From Sea to Shining Sea” and pondering…
If slavery in early America nearly destroyed her, what will her current support of the modern epidemic of slavery, through the mass purchase of slave produced goods do?

Or for that matter, the blind eye we turn towards the sex slave trade. Add to that the rate of unborn babies we murder daily, and our many other sins…

Here are some things I found that will be helpful in becoming a more ethically conscious shopper. I’m new to this myself, so maybe we can learn together.

Click any of the images below to check out the websites.

Please note that some of these companies products are pretty pricey. Check out their sales sections, though! Some of them have awesome deals!

Still by A. R. Ammons

 

 

I said I will find what is lowly

and put the roots of my identity

down there:

each day I’ll wake up

and find the lowly nearby,

a handy focus and reminder,

a ready measure of my significance,

the voice by which I would be heard,

the wills, the kinds of selfishness

I could

freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,

I can find nothing

to give myself to:

everything is

magnificent with existence, is in

surfeit of glory:

nothing is diminished,

nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:

ah, underneath,

a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:

I looked at it closely

and said this can be my habitat: but

nestling in I

found

below the brown exterior

green mechanisms beyond the intellect

awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:

I found a beggar:

he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying

him any attention: everybody went on by:

I nestled in and found his life:

there, love shook his body like a devastation:

I said

though I have looked everywhere

I can find nothing lowly

in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,

transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,

stood in wonder:

moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent

with being!

 

In August I found this butterfly journal at Barnes and Nobles:

 

 

It was sitting there on the shelf, just begging to have poetry written in it. Something about it reminded me of a book my mother used to read me when I was a child, The Lion and Blue.

 

 

I have been reading a lot more poetry lately, in hope of broadening my horizons and learning new styles and techniques.  I decided to combine the two things.

 Every time I find a poem I like, I copy it into my butterfly journal. This poem by A.R. Ammons was one of the latest additions to my book and I just had to share it with you.

 

I hope it inspires much thought…

I Am an American!

Today’s Plinky challenge is “Describe the country you live in to a foreigner who has never heard of it”… 

The Flag of the United States of America 

My country isn’t perfect. 

But that said, people can say what they want without being afraid of the government. We can worship or not worship any god we please. 

You can start from the bottom of the social ladder and work your way to the top. 

You can have an idea and literally make it become reality and all you need is persistence to make it happen. 

My country still notices suffering in the world and tries to help. 

My country says there is more to a person than their skin color, social standing, or the way they talk. 

My country says that the people decide what direction the government goes in. 

My country was founded on the blood of martyrs and visionaries. 

We stand for freedom, for equality, for justice and truth. 

My country is the United States of America