Curly Dock

My love, My Dearest, Curly Dock,

As snowflakes pile around my door today, my house is warm and my tea is hot.  I should be happy, but you are not here.  I should curl up in a blanket, read a book.  Yet I pace the floors, thinking only of you.  My heart pounding, my blood racing, as I imagine our spring reunion.

         
You'd hate it in here, inside, so hot and soft. You are happy beneath your frozen snow, wedged between jagged rocks, and sleeping along roadsides.  When the time is right, you will rise up.  Soon we shall be together again. But I miss you now. 

         
How blind I was when we were first introduced!  I saw you around town and took you for decorations, adding your rusty red seed stalks to fall bouquets.  I heard gossip that your long, lance-shaped, rough, wavey-edged leaves were edible.  How I laughed, fool that I was!  

         
Secretly, I tried one.  I knew it was you, Curly Dock, by your stalk of rattling old seed pods, brick red, and rising 2-4 feet tall.  You were on a city trail, behind warehouses, along railroad tracks.  Do you remember?  I took one of your alternating leaves straight from the stalk.  No branches interfered.  But you were tough, and ridiculously bitter.  "Maybe, if it were the last food on earth!"  I ignorantly laughed. 

           
All over the Inland Northwest, plants hibernated for winter, but along the Snake River on that fateful day, you were there.  You'll remember the freezing night, the frosted sleeping bags.  Down in that canyon, the sun, like my love, was long in rising.  It seeped through the river fog, and climbed above the craggy buttes.  I climbed a little too and found a perch to watch the sun dance with the cold river as the fog slipped into nothing, like a specter finally satisfied.  I stopped shivering and melted into the lichen splotched rocks.

         
When I opened my eyes again, I saw you there, nestled by my side.  Yellow green, the gold sun shone through your newest leaves.  For the first time, I saw you, really saw you.  You were young and fresh, soft and juicy. 

         
I look your tender leaf into my mouth.  And the two became one.  You were lemony and light, the flavor of sunshine, with a refreshing bitterness, like the cold of early spring . 

           
That day gleams bright in my memory.  The day I first loved you for who you are: a beautiful, wild soul, sweet and sharp all at once.  Cities and roads make you intolerably tough, but this is where you shine, in the wild. 

         
 Surprisingly, we have similarities: both European introductions, long since naturalized. 

         
You're wealthy with protein, calcium, iron and potassium. With more vitamin C than oranges, more Vitamin A than carrots, I've found a diamond in the rough.  Rumors has it you're good for liver, blood, lymph nodes, sores, and joints.  Some say you are anti-bacterial and anti-fungal (Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies by Linda Kershaw).  I love that strong vein of resistance in you.

           
More adventures await we two!  Member of the Buckwheat family, your seeds could be boiled for a thrilling mush or ground to deeply satisfying flour.

We might even boil you large leaves, changing the hot water as we steam the kitchen.

         
This is what makes winters so hard: being without you, unable to reach you, and waiting, waiting for early spring to find you.  You won't make me wait long, though.  I can trust that.  You'll be easy to spot too, because last years seed stalk will still be tall and red. 

         
I've noticed your cousins, Sheep and Mountain Sorrels, almost mistaking them for you.  They're fine, but what an embarrassing faux pas that would be! Before I pluck you again, I will know that you are none other than Rumex crispus.

         
When I am finally plucked from this world, I vow to return to you the nourishment and sustenance you have given me.  That is love: giving and receiving.

         
It sounds trite and simplistic, but it's the only way I know how to express it:  I love you, Curly Dock.  Happy Valentine's Day.

            -Yours truly and forever,  Sarajoy Van Boven

Shepherd's Purse

You have the questions, I can tell. You need to know something. Darlingk, come over here, sit down. What is it you need to know? I can tell you anything. Is it love? Maybe, okay. Is it career? No, okay. Me and the crystal snow globe know many things, just ask. It is about weeds, you say? Weeds?! Did I hear right? You come to the Madame Sauvage Farouche for the weeds? Oui oui, it is hard to see the ground beneath all the snow, it is. Soon it will be February, oui oui, it is true.

Well, let us ask the crystal snow globe. I have to turn her upside down, see, so that the snow comes off the bottom. What do I see? Hummmm. I hum a while, it will appear in the swirling snow.

I see a boy, a young boy in wool and fur. He is near a ditch, or maybe an empty lot; rocks, lots of rocks. A gravel driveway? No, but that does not make sense, because I see sheep, lots of sheep, grazing on patches of green between piles of the snow. In the city!

Oh, I must shake it again. There, now the boy and the sheep are leaving, but the boy drops something. Let me see: it is tiny, very tiny, and looks like a tiny bag, or purse. Very very tiny! If this is his money bag, he is a poor shepherd indeed.

The snow is settling again, I must shake. On the ground, among rocks or a ditch maybe, I see a rosette of leaves. They are random: some lobed like dandelion leaves, others oblong like chicory. But they are smaller. The difficulty would be to identify this plant now, but before the seeds come is the best time to eat these greens, I think. But you need to be very sure before you eat a plant, check the manual or expert.

Ah, the snow is disappearing and the stems are growing 3-12" tall. Along the stems are a few more leaves, oblong and narrow like blades of grass. Ah, and here come the small white snow-flake-like flowers, always staying at the tip of the stem, and leaving behind heart-shaped Valentine seed pods along the stem. It's March now it seems, and this plant is telling me it will stick around through June or so.

I'm getting flavor now: mustard greens mixed with turnips mixed with cabbage. Oh! So much more than bitter spinach, and it seems a good substitute: young leaves in salads and older leaves in soups. I see a Chinese woman in this Crystal snow globe telling me they are good in dumplings. She is saying something about gathering these with her mother in China when she was a child, and now she gathers them in here, in Eastern Washington.

I taste ginger now. But I am looking at the roots here. I see fresh roots and dried ones in carrot soup.

I also see a Native American woman, winnowing chaff from the peppery seeds and grinding the seeds between stones for flour. But this plant seems European in origin. (Edible and Medicinal Plants of The Rockies by Linda Kershaw.)

Oh! here's something terrible! I see the pregnant woman, sick and ailing. No, it does not look good. Ah! Now I see the woman in labor drinking tea. Now she is with a newborn in her hands and she is drinking a strong tea from the herb, and there is not too much blood. Oh, I see many people drinking the tea made from the dried stems and leaves: people with headaches, and stomach aches, and the hemorrhoids. Oh, dear! I did not want to see that!

Does the term Capsella bursa-pastoris mean something to you? I keep hearing the words: Box, purse, pastor. Do you recognize? There is only one species, I think.

Ah! So you do! Tell me what is this plant?

Shepherd's purse. I see. It does all make sense, doesn't it? Madame Sauvage Farouche see's the truth, does she not?

Chickweed

In the Miss Wild Edible contest, there are many runners up, but only one of these ladies has super star status.  Wearing the eternal crown and sash of Miss Wild Edible is Chickweed.  Chickweed's Latin name, Stellaria Media, means little star, in the midst.  She was born to wear the crown and sash.  Despite the biased judge, she's actually well qualified to be Miss Wild Edible.  Personality wise, she is the humblest of wild edibles, hanging low, around the ground in alleys and sidewalk cracks.  She's courageous, braving the cold of winter, jumping up every time the snow melts.  She's got charisma too, as the first wild green, heralding spring, lush and juicy.  And she's a good national representative.  I personally have snacked on her from New Orleans to Orcas Island.

           
She will be around in February, barring major snow accumulation.  Chickweed is always small, but especially so in February.  However, picking off the tops will give you more tops to pick off later.  I have not needed to venture any further than out my back door to find chickweed.  She loves shady, wet, and protected areas.   In my old alley, she grows around the water main, on a very old compost pile and under a hedge of lilacs.  In your days as an undereducated fool, you may have chucked her from your garden.  She would have been the one that was easy to uproot. 

           
Late spring, chickweed will be a 12" tall spindly mat of tan colored twine topped with incredibly green, little leaves and a constellation of small white asterisks.  Currently, the chickweed is about 4" tall.   Like myself, chickweed is Not a morning person, so her five, white, dual-lobed petals don't open until afternoons.  The leaves are the most encouraging green, ½" long usually, and shaped like shovels, but pointier at the ends.  There are two at a time from the same place on the stem.  With good eyesight, you can see one tiny, shifting line of hairs on the stem.

What to do with chickweed?  Eat the green tops by the bucket load, fresh.  There is a chamber of my heart dedicated to loving every moment I have spent eating chickweed.  It is the sweetest wild green I have ever tasted.  Add some wild to a tame leaf lettuce salad.  Temper the bitter greens that we'll gather later this year.  Munch as you hike.   You could also substitute it for spinach in a sauté, casserole or soup.  There is no need to dry or cook it, though some experts encourage this.

       
According Susun Weed (author of Healing Wise),  chickweed is very high in copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, silicon and zinc.  It is high in calcium, chlorophyll, phosphorus, potassium, protein, Vitamin A, and fat.  And it is a good source of Vitamin C, riboflavin, niacin, thiamine, and plant sodium. 

        
Certainly, we can be sure that the FDA has never investigated or verified the healing power of chickweed poultices.  However, Susun Weed advocates chickweed poultices be applied to every possible injury.  Anecdotally, I have used chickweed poultices to rapidly clear up physician-diagnosed pink-eye that would not respond to eye drops.  Here's how you make a chickweed poultice:  fill a small jar with chickweed.  Pour boiling water over it.  Pull the chickweed out shortly thereafter, place on a very clean, thin clothe.  When cool enough to handle, but still quite warm, place it on area of ailment until cool.  This whole process is rather hot.  Please be sure to not burn or scald anyone.  You could also drink the nutritious green water left in the jar.  Repeat it every few hours for success.

        
Warnings: Identify with 100% certainty. As it is low growing, you will want to beware of animal excretions.  I am careful to not pick chickweed growing near poisonous mushrooms. In Herbal Medications, D.G. Spoerke wonders if large amounts of chickweed infusion might have been responsible for a temporary paralysis.  He then assures us, "There is no recent evidence to indicate that chickweed presents a toxic hazard."

        
Therefore, it is my pleasure to crown her Miss Wild Edible!  Here she comes!  Waving her princess wave.  Down the red carpet.  Into your heart and belly.