Herbs in January

In January, hunting green herbs seems like an oddity and luxury, but every winter here the land grants me free chives -- unfailingly, and as much as I can scissor. Often the clumps are sticking up through snow, the only greenery in a black-and-white landscape. Today there's no snow, and hunting (I needed two ounces) felt like heaven.

They grow wild mainly in areas where the soil is disturbed by mowing, and seem to like slopes, the wetter the better.

How generous these onion-grass plants are! In winter this grass enhances a butter sauce for fish or gets sprinkled on carrot soup. By mid-March, pinkish-white bulbs have formed underground: spring onions, which I pull and use like scallions, both the green and the white, and while I do that I awaken worms and nightcrawlers whom I'm delighted to have as company. In early autumn when the onion "heads" are formed, I can harvest their tendrils, which are garlicky.

Some people want to, and fight to, clear their yards of onion grass! Why?