Saving the Dandelion
This morning I read an email from a friend about foraging wild plants, some would call weeds, that are edible, good “nutritionally, well-adapted to conditions and independent of our care.” This sounded interesting to me and I said to my wife that I should check this out. She said that when we pick wild grape leaves to make the Lebanese dish of grape leaves we are foraging. I never looked at it as foraging, although I have been picking grape leaves all my life in parks, along fences and in my backyard. However, persons watching me picking leaves off of vines probably did. There is a whole wide world out there in wild plants to forage and eat.
Today we traveled up north near Pulaski, Wisconsin to help celebrate my granddaughter’s 4 year old birthday. The two of us went to take a walk along the Yellow Dandelion Road. She stopped to pick some dandelions on the lawn before the lawnmower cut them down. She did not look at them as food, although dandelion greens are, but as something of beauty to be saved from the lawnmower. I guess they are both, to the eye of a child beautiful flowers and to the eye of the forager food
My friend had written me in response to my email saying how I was waiting for my garden to grow. Why wait was his response when the time to pick the healthy ‘weeds’ is now. I guess plants like wild violets and dandelions are beautiful and food weeds.
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