Sand blackberries have bloomed. All of a sudden we can see lovely white flowers everywhere. They smell heavenly.
Buds on the trees are coming out, but most the plantlife is still hibernating. The fauna have been making loads of appearances though. On the drive home from KS a couple days ago I saw a young doe grazing off the side of the road (and hopefully she never strayed into the intrastate…), as well as tons and I mean TONS of flocks of birds. They looked like an ant colony in the sky! Also some young squirrels have been chattering and playing in the trees.
Wild daffodils (we call them ‘‘easter lillies’’) waking up in western Norway. Also, daisies!
Now is the time to harvest the sticky buds off the cottonwood or poplar trees. You can use them for glue but they are really good medicine.
My wife makes balm of gillead with them. A salve made with the cottonwood buds, beezwax and olive oil. Good for sore muscles, joints etc. All the Populus family of trees have salicin, the source of aspirin.
And they smell divine. If you’ve ever walked through the cottonwood flats along a valley bottom in the spring you know the smell. Cottonwoods are one of my favorite trees.
Lomatium macrocarpum is up all over the south facing slopes along the Kettle river.
I’ve seen a few Yellow bells (Fritillaria pudica) too.
Arrow leafed balsam root (Balsamorhiza sagittata) is also up and just starting to bloom.
Nodding onions (Allium cernuum) are up but immature.
False solomons seal (smilacina racemosa) is up around my place, looking somewhat like asparagus spears. Which reminds me that I better go look for wild asparagus today. It should be up soon if not already.
Lomatium triturnatum (dried leaves are a great herb for deer meat) is beginning to show itself now too.
The first hummingbird of the year demonstrated the “Doppler effect” right past my head this morning.
picked some horsetail today at Discovery park, though most have passed the edible stage, as well as some oregon grape flowers.
Just got a nice fat fistfull of wild asparagus. There’s a lot more that are only about an inch tall now. That’s the great thing about asparagus, I can pick the same patch over and over for a month or more.
Found one lonely morel too.
the asparagus looks great.
i was out walking in a field where i like to go fairly often grumbling about how some motherfucker had come by and mowed the thing when at my feet i saw tiny red berries. I stooped down and looked at them further and they looked like tiny strawberries. So convinced I had found wild strawberries I came back the next day and picked a couple handfuls. I tasted a couple and was surprised that there was almost no taste except a slight melon-like little aftertaste. Well, a little research later and I’m now convinced that they’re mock strawberries (Duchesnea indica not Fragaria vesca). Well, least they’re not poisonous and I didn’t kill myself. haha!
speaking of other finds, I found some Wapato while out on an off-road bike ride the other day. Though it’s not time to collect them (at least from what I’ve read), it was beautiful to see them growing where it looks like cars and 4x4s used to (or maybe sometimes still) go.
Mmmm. In Minnesota, there were wild strawberries along the side of our driveway. Every time I walked to get the mail in the summer, I looked for them. Once I gathered so many of them, I had enough to make a small jar of jam.
There is also wild asparagus along the side of the paved road (usually growing in the ditch). My dad collects it, and I believe he transferred a plant or two to his garden patch.
I saw arnica today around my workshop. No flowers yet but the leaves are clearly visible.
The saskatoons (service berry in the US) are in full bloom right now. This is on my way to town. I love it. Can’t wait to be pickin’ 'em.
been feasting on lady fern fiddle heads here on vancouver island. Harvesting alder bark and hemlock bark for tanning is nice now, very potently astringent and easy to peel off as the tasty cambium is forming. Cedar stripping time as well. been wandering in the swamp up to my belly in muck collecting cattail shoots.
Hey Lonnie,
We munched on a few lady fern fiddle heads yesterday. We saw a bunch of wild ginger too.
A Rewild forum participant, Sandwalker, is visiting right now.
I took him out asparagus picking the day before yesterday, we got enough for my wife and us to each have a good apsaragus serving for dinner plus lunch the next day.
We went on a little foraging expedition yesterday. We got a bunch of nettle tops. I know you Van. Island and W. Coasters have been eating them for quite a while now, but these are the first ones for us here in the interior.
We had steamed nettles and bbq sockeye for dinner.
The trilliums are blooming now, I just love them.
We’ve been getting morels here and there lately.
The heat and rain have brought a lot of our snow down from the mountains so our valleys are flooding now.
Last week I was down in the San Gabriel River watershed and took a few pictures. I’ve been down there almost every week for the past month or so. It’s getting a bit to hot to make the bike ride out there now, though. Last week, the cacti and buckwheat were flowering. The brittlebush flowers were wilting and their leaves were beginning to shrink. The golden currants were ripe and delicious! They saved my ass, because it was hotter than expected and I didn’t have breakfast that morning. It only took a couple of handfuls to wipe out my fatigue.
Before I left, a raven glided in circles above my head. I tried to get a picture but she didn’t want it. The first shot I screwed up, and then she flew away before I could get ready for a second.
A couple of panorama shots of the San Gabriel River:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0006.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0007.jpg
Our local short-tempered entheogen:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0005.jpg
The currants are current:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0016.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0019.jpg
Cacti are in bloom and the bees love them:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0021.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0022.jpg
Buckwheat is blooming as well:
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0026.jpg
I’m also putting in some pictures of my garden. I mostly just planted a few small plants and scattered some seeds around in a few small spaces I got. Things are just starting to get interesting. I’m sad I gotta be leaving them.
A potato in a (the neighbor’s) washbin. I was hoping to see this flower.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0035.jpg
A tangled mess of tomato and nasturtium with a potato in the bottom left corner.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0046.jpg
A tomato close up (just to prove that, yes, they’re there and doing pretty well).
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0047.jpg
My herb plot, which has mint, garlic, oregano, lemon verbena, horehound and feverfew.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0048.jpg
And lastly, on the trip back I stopped to rest under a bridge. I’ve never noticed this on my previous trips, because it was never really hot enough for me to have to stop and rest. While I was resting, I noticed some squeaking noises coming from behind me, seemingly from up near the base of the bridge. I climbed up a few feet and realized they were coming from above me. Then I noticed the dark spot on the ground to my right. Guano! I’ll have to go back one evening to watch the bats fly out for the night.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/xelkarin/IMAG0030.jpg
As I’m sitting here looking out my window I can see little poofs of yellow pollen randomly coming off the branches of a big ponderosa pine. Like little plumes of smoke coming off the tips of the branches. It makes it look like the tips of the branches are smoldering and about to burst into flames.
The pollen pods are swollen to bursting on the ponderosa’s right now.
I remember looking out over a valley while sitting on a stump taking a break, when I worked in the woods, and seeing gusts of wind take whole clouds of pollen off the lodgepole pines on a slope. It looked like there was a smoldering fire on the slope. Took us a minute to figure out what it was.
PS. Whoa! a gust of wind just took a big cloud off this ponderosa! We have yellow dust all over everything now.
Fun and YUMMY pine pollen. I enjoy foraging around a cup or two every year to add to muffins, although this year I’ve skipped thus far.
The berry season has officially begun here in mid vancouver island. WE had our first salmonberry feast a few days ago, and collected oyster mushrooms at the same time.