Today was the first day I noticed the wild cherries blooming along the river. Whether you call them chokecherries, hackberries or birdcherries, they are beautiful in bloom and a produce a wonderful fruit for cooking. Read more …
This is a bad year for apples in our neighborhood. The Golden Delicious tree I usually pick from only produced a handful of apples at the highest branches (ten pounds at the most), and the tree with the red Jonagold-type fruit produced only about 100 apples, most of which the bees and worms got to first. I’ve picked maybe a dozen … Read more
Dekalb came over today to pick apples and pears in my neighborhood. There’s just one pear tree in the neighborhood, and all pears within reach of the ground had already been picked by others. We use a ladder and a picker pole to pick the rest. We got about 20 pounds. I set aside a few for snacking, but since … Read more
On my walk today, I passed five apple trees. Three of them had a few fruits on them that were mostly ripe. I couldn’t resist picking some, even if it’s too early in the season for them to have developed sweetness. I like my apples tart, anyway! Only one made it home with no nibbles from me. Another I had eaten down … Read more
Dekalb and I went downtown again to harvest ‘garbage‘ today – one of our favorite ways to save money and recycle at the same time. Here’s the first spot we hit: A lot of this furniture was in good condition even after being thrown into a dumpster, but neither of us needed any so we left it there. Both of … Read more
It’s that time of year again, when consumer goods grow on the curb and around dumpsters as if by magic, all sitting there just ripe for the picking. In other words: the leases downtown are almost up, university students suddenly realize they have no desire to move all their crap with them, and they end up throwing perfectly good stuff out as trash: … Read more
I was walking by the river near my house today and was delighted to see one of my favorite prairie plants blooming along the banks: Monarda fistulosa, also known as bee balm or wild bergamot. This charming flower is native to most of North America — and if you don’t have it in your neck of the woods, you might have one … Read more
There are lots of false dandelions (cat’s ear) around Portland. Unlike the grass, they don’t seem to mind the drought. Like the greens can be eaten just like those of the true dandelion, and they’re way easier to grow than lettuce since you don’t even have to water them. They’re also more bitter, a bit like arugula or mustard greens. … Read more
It’s almost the end of June and I haven’t written about juneberries, my favorite foraging fruit next to blackcaps. Juneberries are small, round berries that look like tiny purple crabapples, but that are soft like a blueberry. They grow on shrubs or small trees. Where I live they are often called serviceberries or amelanchier (after their Latin genus name Amelanchier), probably because they don’t really … Read more
I went to pick cherries at my old co-housing today with Dekalb. These are tiny cherries, about the size of dimes, and their pits take up about have their volume. But they are nice and sweet, which makes them great for juice and jellies. I don’t know the name of the variety. One tree has yellow ones that are sweeter, … Read more