Plants, past and present

Recently, I met one of the prior owners of my house, a couple who lived there approximately 35 years ago. They moved out in 1977, but had been in the house a few years. They purchased it from a widower, who, they surmise from the condition of the inside of the house, did not do much to the property, inside or out, for the 20 years he was in the house. That said, the backyard was teeming with gardenic splendor, and had raspberries, a plum tree, currants, and lots of other things to eat. It kept the owners I met fed and satisfied. That is, except for the back part of the property, near the fence, because of a black walnut tree, which alleleopathically prevented most anything else from growing. Since those times, the new-ish garage is back up against the fence; the black walnut tree is no longer, and hopefully the soil is starting to recover its ability to support new life and growth. With this as a preface, the conversation I had with the prior owners of my property made me think about the history of the land. Just imagine of all of that energy that went into the property to coax it along to produce vegetables and fruits, and how, since then, it is mostly grass and gravel, and shade from “weedy, European” Norway maples. What does the land “want” to be? I have a vision of the possible now, but what would be nature’s progression if simply let be? It will take a fair amount of work and soil enhancement to produce again, and what will my template be for a satisfying use of the property. As I contemplate (template!) My Year of Plants, the issue of goals and objectives for interacting with the plant world, necessarily involves the history of the land. People have done this before! And, what they did with the land affects what I can do with the property, with any property actually. Years of black walnut toxicity would make my gardening efforts difficult, and, had they snipped off those small maple seedlings 40 years ago, I wouldn’t now be faced with the task of trimming branches or clearing the trees all together. What’s right for the land, I ask again? What should I do with the property? Only what I want to? What produces the most? What looks the best? What used to be there? Perhaps the history of the property provides a glimpse into the answers to these questions. Though, as I have been hinting at all along, the REAL answers and details to this fascinating topic (like all of the other monthly queries and explorations) will be found in the corresponding chapter of My Year of Plants. Check it out when it is printed and enjoy.! And, thank you for a great year of your attention and interest in plants, our interaction with the green world, and some ideas for the future of humans, food, medicines, and the Earth. I hope that it has been a fun, insightful journey, and I welcome any thoughts you have had along the way!

Plants and Culture

Lately, for a variety of reasons, I have been struck by the malleability and diversity of plant knowledge. I say malleability because it seems that we humans are always shifting and changing our interaction with the plant world. Think of recipes. I thought that I had the best pizza dough recipe (which, interestingly, I copied from a newspaper article posted in a chain pizza restaurant), until I tasted a pizza crust at a pot luck. I had been usurped! What I did next was, of course, search for the “owner” to demand (ask?) for the recipe. My cuisine and related cooking skills needed updating. I also see this behavior in the medicinal plant world. I have been honored to meet people from many different countries now living in Madison, Wisconsin, and who believe in and use plants for healing on a regular basis. Some botanical “friends” have come out my meetings and interviews, including chamomile/manzanilla (Matricaria recutita), and garlic/ajo (Allium sativa), but I have been pleasantly surprised with tricks and pearls in the use and ingestion of these plants. I have noticed some nuances relevant to the way that people use plants, and this use seems to vary country-by-country. Most fascinating are the lively inter-country discussions about the correct way to prepare a plant, when to use it during a particular illness, and the freshest, most effective source. I have good friends of Italian heritage, and the medicinal plant debates sound a lot like the Italian feuds over whose sauce, wine, soccer team, etc is the best. People form strong opinions about plants, herbs, food, healing, and for good reason: our livelihood, literally and figuratively, depends on an optimal, and I would argue, mutual plant-people interaction. I love learning about plant-use diversity for its own sake, and because it helps me add to my plant knowledge, that is, improve in the way plants are a part of my life.

An apple a day...

I guess that I should watch the of that adage (I am a physician after all), but it seemed apropos! Now, let it be known that I like a good, crisp, tart/sweet (depending on my mood) apple, just like the next guy. So, I welcome fall and the arrival of apples at the local farmers market and our Madisonian food co-ops. I love the box or bushel basket full of non-uniform sized fruits, labeled merely as a price per pound and the farmer’s or farm’s name; it is the name that I have to remember when I check out. “Are those Glen’s or Penny’s apples you have there”, the clerk queries. No bar codes or stickers when we return to take a step back (forward?) to Mother Nature, that’s for sure. In Wisconsin, I am finding it easier to branch out from the main apple varieties. My home of almost 15 years and comparison state is Washington, a prominent apple grower, and, it seemed to me, exporter. Many of the apples we found in the bigger grocery stores were Fujis, Red Delicious, and Granny Smiths from New Zealand. The co-ops and farmers markets captured some of the local apples before they were whisked away, but, in a pinch, I was stuck with marginal apples that had traveled thousands of miles to reach my kitchen, or, well, teeth. Now, I’m swamped, and almost literally have apples coming out of my ears. It has been fun to explore the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association website, but the “Find an Orchard” tab only scrolls down to “10 miles”, so I won’t be walking or biking anywhere quickly to pick a piece of fruit for lunch. Under “General Info”, then “Educational Materials,” I located the “Favorite Apples” pdf, listing 18 varieties, but I know there are more, both within the city (I love the feral apple delight on occasional, but watch out for the worm, or worse, the half-worm) and in the one orchard I visited last fall. Either way, it is going to be very fun to venture into Apple-land and find the best for eating, cooking, baking, pressing, and, we’ve all done it, throwing. An apple a day….

Beer

Fall makes me think about “the harvest”, even though when was the last time I participated in a full-blown harvest? Possibly never, but, nonetheless, right now plants are producing, and people are picking, storing, preserving, and enjoying. Then, somewhere in that harvest process, my mind jumps to beer. It’s natural, both the process of fermenting grains and adding other plants in order to create fermented beverages such as beer, and the fact that my mind gravitates towards beer this time of year. I think it’s hard-wired; I remember that lecture in college when Professor Tim Allen made a compelling case that agriculture was developed and societies formed not to more efficiently raise food to eat, rather to drink the results of the fermented grains stemming from agrarian efforts. And, don’t get me wrong. I think about beer during other times of the year; the lager on a hot summer day, humidity dripping off the ice-cold bottle, or that winter stout meant to fortify our system and, well, midsection against the cold, inhospitable winter. But, fall, FALL, and its beer festivals (my favorite, the Quivey’s Grove Beer Festival, outside of Madison, Wisconsin, just happened), seems like just the right time to get a batch going, as well as enjoy the efforts of biermeisters throughout the region as they release the latest India Pale Ale, Oktoberfest or Amber. As I delve more into this topic in the book that I keep referring to in this blog, the medicinal aspects of some of the additives to beer most keenly attract my attention. Just the other day, in Marquette, Michigan, I saw advertised in an attractive, ground floor bar, a beer named the “Honey Citral IPA”. Citral, or the aromatic essential oil in lemon, lemon balm and lemon grass, probably anything lemon, has anti-spasmodic and anti-microbial properties, interesting medicinal effects for our barley beverage. And, the literature on hops is extensive, as are the flavors and unique ingredients making its way into microbrew coolers around the country. Maybe the medicinal effect is yet another reason to twist off the cap on your local brewski.

Wildcrafting

A fascinating word that seems to promise both adventure and art, wildcrafting refers to the harvesting of plants from the wild, most often for their use as medicines. In the theme of My Year Of Plants, I decided to wildcraft some of my favorite plants that grow in Wisconsin. Due to the generosity of proprietor Tom of Nature Nooks Retreat (www.naturenooksretreat.com), my friends Lynn and August, and myself were able to explore his property with a shovel and clippers, hoping to procure the raw materials necessary to make healing medicines for the next few months, if not beyond. In preparation for this adventure, the night before was spent perusing a variety of herbal texts (see photo),

trying to determine which plants might be best harvested this time of year, how to do it, and for which medical conditions they would be useful. I was hoping for an anti-viral or two, a tonic (to "build up" my system for the cold weather to come), or any other intriguing plants. The red herring, and, well, art to this endeavor was the fact that I had no prior experience with this property (and Lynn and August just one prior visit), and therefore the translation of our book smarts to usable raw material was a bit of a challenge. The property was beautiful (see another amazing Kiefer photo)

so just the process of walking around exploring was enough to markedly improve my health. We found only one burdock plant (on our wish list), so in the name of conservation we left it behind. Elderberry (Sambucus nigra, I think!) however was in abundance (see photo), leading to a full bowl of berries that would make a great anti-viral syrup.

That step, though, is too much information for this lowly blog; please buy my book someday to learn, in detail, about herbal medicine making and use!

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: Flowers!

July is all about flowers in the Midwest. Yes, we have our Spring bloom, our winter bulbs that poke through the newly worked soil in April, May, June and show off their wares. But, it’s the flourish of summer when Nature preens, shows off, impresses. Some of the perennials do their thing in July, having survived the greenhouses, the crazy flock of green thumbs that pick them over during plant sales or Saturday morning in the landscaping companies parking lot, and haphazard (I might be a bit autobiographical here) transplanting with probably not enough compost, probably too much water, and not even close the right depth in the soil. Sound familiar? Other plants that were started from seed, or survived in situ the winter pummeling, also begin to express a little floral color in July. However, I do not think that our household and yard plantings are the origin for why this month is so special when it comes to flowers. We need to venture out, off the roads, on the dirt paths, into our local prairies and woods to see that there is a true swelling of the land. There isn’t much time to sprout, shoot, and flower, but the prairie forbs seem to have found that way, and late June, and definitely in July, August, and September, are the most glorious yellows, purples, whites, and reds imaginable, on all sizes ands shapes of green stems that would make even Claude Monet go running for the oils and palette., maybe even jumping for joy, screaming something about “Impressionism.” My meager attempts at home are but a reminder of the truly great things happening elsewhere, humbly realizing that elsewhere means “anyone else’s yard”, but, most importantly, the untouched, or restored areas outside or next to human development. If you are one of the avid blog readers, my trusty followers longing for the full, ripe chapters that will surely be filling “My Years of Plants”, the flowers treatise will eventually include such tidbits as the Kiefer versus Varmint battle over sunflowers and whether or not the 4th sunflower generation of 2012 survived; floral parts and botanical taxonomy and the relevance of this somewhat geeky topic to your daily life, medicinal quandaries, and scientific discourse with friends during meals or over a beer; “She loves me, she loves me not”; edibles and medicinals and what might be the difference; and much, much more. What should you do with this tease, this prelude to the future? Well, as with past chapters, stay tuned!

(Fill-in-the-Blank) Berries

Perhaps it is fitting that the June "My Year of Plants" entry actually takes place in mid-July. The pace of plant-related activities and responsibilities achieves a whole new level as summer hits full stride. There is watering to be done, before and after work, especially in this year of record drought and high temperatures. The Japanses beetles finally found my grape vines, so I have to spend time picking them off the leaves and brainstorming about ways to prevent their friends and cousins from following suit. And, not to mention the hours planting, transplanting, tying up, mulching, composting, and fixing fences. Who has time to write? Had none of these (wonderful) tasks infused my life, I would have dedicated June to berries, spurred partly by the picking and enjoying/eating that took place during that month in a friend's raspberry patch. Berries are clearly the hot topic nowadays in the media, for both our local varieties (an interesting push is occurring in Wisconsin about the chokeberry, Prunus virginiana) and for the many interesting tropical fruits touted for their impressive antioxidant levels and purported health effects. Sure, I consider health and vitality when popping a berry into my expectant mouth, but I'm more of a simpleton: the taste, the texture, the fact that often I have just picked this from some unsuspecting thorny cane, these are my motivators. I can't seem to get enough. Furthermore, berries are where my past meets my present and then shakes hand with my future; I find that I remember working in my grandmother's garden as a child and now try to re-live the recipes in my summer life. Not to mention the plans I have for jams and jellies, and frozen berries that make their way into smoothies, taking advantage of a new and powerful blender. I could go on and on, and, in fact, I will in this chapter of "My Year of Plants." The pending book will be your guide to berries, smoothie recipes, and insider scoops about weeding a strawberry patch in northern Wisconsin. You can't wait, can you?