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Random thoughts and pieces - Spring is getting near.

    Over the past few days the temperature has been on a roller coaster ride as we hit peak highs and small dips that remind us that this is Western Pennsylvania and winter may not be over till April.  However the days are getting warmer and spring - once a faraway dream - seems to be sneaking in.   

    I was even able to open the windows a few days ago and the last of the snow; dating back to mid December, has finally melted away.   

    The other night I watch as a family of deer grazed outside my front window nibbling on the first green sprigs of grass, our youngest cat looking on in fascination.  Spring is coming.  The days are getting longer and I think about planting some flowers and seedlings obtained through the Mercer Country Conservation website.

    I'm thinking that the native wild flowers and grasses will make a nice addition to the home.  

    I plan on letting part of the yard go wild again this year, letting it be overrun with native plants, I'm even considering taking up food foraging.  I've always been interested in taste, flavor and texture and as I learn more about food, the more curious I am about how nettles taste or how to cook a fiddlehead fern.  We have fiddleheads growing in our yard as it is, why not take advantage of them?

    Plus I like the idea of having a new skill, and one of my favorite memories from college was a field botany class where the professor would often cook up what she had found out in nature for our labs.  Plus there is an economic component to this as well.  I am not becoming a miser by any means but with rising costs and other environmental concerns, learning to forage only makes sense.  

    How many of us as kids enjoyed the wonderful taste of wild blueberries or strawberries?   How many of us have enjoyed the taste of dandelions in a salad  or a spring of wild onion?  The odd taste of a wild apple pulled from some old ancient tree?  Just thinking about it brings me back to my youth. 


    So I sit here, wondering where I can learn to forage like a pro.  Where I can find some proper containers for a garden and will I actually do these things?   I am lazy and sometimes - most times, if I am being honest - my plans come to naught because of my laziness.

    After 55 years I have become conditioned to certain ways of doing things...and life will simply not allow for those ways anymore.   I know deep down that we can't stop climate change, but I have to do my part...to quote the poet "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."  That's one of the reasons my diet is changing and yea, that's one of the reasons I want to have a garden too.

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What all the cool kids are reading.

Maybe we need to rethink invasive species???

Hi. As the writer of the post and feel that I need to clarify something. I do not advocate the planting of invasive species. The point that I'm trying to make, and clearly didn't, is that perhaps we should be thinking about an invasive species in a different light. Apples, figs and other crops are clearly non native to America and Europe but are widely cultivated because they have use to humans as a food source, animal feed, etc. Kudzu is an edible plant and although it is clearly harmful can it be used someway by humans? It's a food source, it's been used as a cloth and is showing some use as a building material. All I'm trying to do is to create discussion on how we can use invasive plants in new ways.   It's mid April here in Western Pennsylvania and so far it's been warm and wet.  The buzz of lawnmowers fill the air as I gallivant through my back yard collecting dandelions to make some tea and bread with them.  I had always known that they w
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