Wild Asparagus

Thought I'd post some pictures of the wild asparagus from last month. It was exciting to find it, I knew the plants were there, but had only seen it in the fall, when I gathered the red berries for my own wintersowing.



The asparagus grows on a hill across the road from us, probably the escapee of some long ago garden. The kids and I would walk over every few days, and scan the spots where last year's old stalks and branches could still be found (the farm is mowed for hay, but with last year's drought, I guess they were able to grow unhindered). We had almost given up, and the kids probably thought I was crazy, but we kept looking. Finally, after a couple of warm, sunny days (and right about the time my asparagus seeds were sprouting), we spotted our first spears.

This is what it looks like coming up out of the ground:

You can see why it can be hard to spot. The sticks in the photo are some of last year's stalks, after they had fallen down. As the grass and weeds grow taller, it becomes harder to find; the stalks and tips take on the same green and dusty purple as that of the surrounding grass and its seedheads, and searching for asparagus becomes a game of hidden pictures.

Asparagus needs to be gathered soon after it emerges, within a day if the soil is warm and growth is fast. The stalk becomes bitter once its scales have opened,

to form branches:

Another interesting thing is a ferny version - this is probably the male or female plant, I've read conflicting viewpoints on that, but I'm guessing female, unless both sexes produce spears and ferns.

What I'm curious about are the small red beetles that seemed to love the ferns, they were on every plant we found. Wish I'd taken the time to observe them more closely; I don't know if they were eating the plant. It's possible that they lay their eggs on it.


Oops, I forgot to mention the eating! Well, I can't yet compare it to garden asparagus, but I can tell you that the store-bought spears I cooked up, while much thicker, were also much tougher; I had to cut off quite a bit as unusable. The wild asparagus, cut within a day or so of appearing, was tender almost to the ground. And oh, so good. Just steam it (or microwave in a covered dish with some water) for a couple of minutes, and it's ready to be eaten (yummy with a cheese sauce!) or canned.

The canned asparagus in the photo is mostly store-bought, with some wild thrown in.

I'll try to add a photo of the mature plants in the fall, if they aren't mown down this year. I also need to find out how to wrap photos into the text, this post looks like one of my infamous Lists!

In the meantime, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons, is a related title that others have recommended; I've had it on my wishlist for a while:

Bees and Cell Phones

See? I'm not completely insane! Cell phones ARE making the animals wacky!

Apparently, scientists are looking at cell phone radiation as a possible culprit in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). They went looking through previous work, and according to a study that had been done in Germany in 2003, when cell phones were placed near hives, as much as 70% of the colony failed to find their way home after foraging. Now I'm not sure how much radiation they were exposed to in order to have this effect, but that's what's happening with CCD, as well. The bees aren't dying in the hive, they just aren't there anymore. So it's possible something like this is at least involved.

Of course, I am also reading that certain pesticides used against aphids can cause bees to behave erratically.

I have to wonder, if we ever actually figure out what's causing this, and it turns out to be something we aren't willing or able to change...what happens?

Combine the fact that bees pollinate most everything except our grains, with the grain issues due to weather (not mentioning corn for ethanol, I'm not!), and I'd say we're in for a long, bumpy ride this year on food prices/supply.

A View of Today

It wasn't until I sat down and looked back at the day that I realized how many little bits of "nature" had affected me today, even though I didn't go outside until late afternoon.

I talked to my mother this afternoon, she was ecstatic about the beautiful weather we're having, and excited to tell me that she and Dad had seen honeybees and blooms all over their yard today.

My oldest daughter spent the night with friends. Today, they went down to the river to look at how high it had gotten from all the rain we'd had (yesterday, some spots in town were underwater).
I phoned a friend, and we ended up talking about ponds and fishing. I have a great-aunt and great-uncle who fish together; wherever they live, they like to have a good pond nearby. I love to fish. I could stare at a bobber or the ripples on the water for hours, plenty of time for contemplation, no pressure to do anything else. It would be a nice way to spend old age. My husband doesn't like the idea of actually catching fish, but he'd come along to read a book. He's got the idea, he just doesn't know it. You can fish without bait or a hook, you know. ;)

I mowed some of the yard with the new reel mower. It's no harder to push than a gas mower, and works well, but the bolt that holds the little back wheel on keeps working its way out, so I guess I'll have to dig through the toolbox for something I can use to tighten it. The kids were fascinated with the whole thing, and followed me around, asking questions and pointing out spots that I'd missed. I explained the scissor-like cutting action, that it was a bit like giving the grass a haircut, and they let me know that the grass was thanking me, the barber. Apparently I couldn't hear the grass, so they translated, before running off to build more "anthills" under the swingset.

After we watched three deer cross the road, I took them walking to look for any signs of wild asparagus on a hill near our house. Nothing yet, but we'll keep checking. I collected seeds from the fall plants a couple of years ago, and I didn't know if they were still viable, but the ones I sowed this winter are germinating! Long, white radicles are reaching out and pushing into the soil. I wonder if the spears on the hill will come up at the same time as the sprouts. Hmm...

On the walk, we stopped to look at tiny spring flowers, and when we found acorns, the 6yo remembered last summer's acorn collection. Did we still have it? Sure! So when we got back, he decided that he and his little sister would plant them all, throughout the yard. I didn't put up too much of a protest; they're probably dried out, so I don't expect little oak trees everywhere. But you never know!

While they dug and planted, I sat down at an outdoor table and leafed through Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest, thinking about all of those seeds and roots sitting in my kitchen, waiting to go into the ground. I heard a clicking noise and looked up to see my first bat of the year, fluttering around above our heads. There was still a good amount of light, and there was a reddish tint to its fur where last bit of sunlight was hitting it. Click, click. Click, click. That was interesting, I've never heard one do that before. Another bat showed up before long, but it was smaller, darker, flapped its wings more...frantically? I watched them swoop and dive for a while, that sudden stop-then-dart thing they do, then wider and wider circles over an area.

You know how, on summer nights, kids like to throw rocks in the air, then watch a bat dive down to follow it for a bit? I got a silly notion, and wondered if there were other ways to play with a bat. Would waves of any sort interfere with a bat's perception? How about cell phone signals? Don't laugh, it was the only thing I had on me. Okay, so just for the record, cell phone tones, at least, don't seem to send out anything particularly interesting, based on limited study. LOL I do wonder about waves in general, though, and got the idea it could make the basis of an interesting short story. Bats driven mad by personal devices invade city! ANYway.

So, I'll skip all of the birds, the spring peepers singing, the way the cat's pawprints look in the pressed-flat, wet clay spots in our yard. It's been a good day, with exhilarating air, and almost drowse-inducing sunshine. A day to be outside.

And a bit ago, I found the 6yo using scissors to give the grass a trim!