Shopping My Lawn

It's no longer smart to buy fresh greens at the store twice a week, so I hunt the lawn and surrounds for dandelion greens -- strong-tasting but palatable if "massaged" with oil and then vinegar; thanks to friend Jody for the tip. And while hunting -- needing about 3 ounces for a serving, because the greens break down radically -- I stop and see: a morel.

Haven't seen morels on this land for years, despite scouring the deep woods for 'em every April, and here on the side of the lane was one insolent little perfectly formed morel, and then I saw another, and another, a total of six, and then after getting scissors from the house and cutting them I looked again and found two more. I'd have missed them entirely had I not been hunting dandelions and spring onions that very day and hour.

The romantic cliche about finding morels in the woods had over the years displaced in my mind the fact that morels, being sociable, liking disturbed earth, prefer to pop up next to a well-traveled path. These occupied an area about four feet square alongside the gravel driveway.

I told a friend and she said I had been aligned with God. For the next five days, I cased the spot for more. Morels don't regrow. They decide when, where, and how they'll pop up, they're all up at once, and either you're in their moment or you're not. Sliced and sauteed them.

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?

Homegrown

Wildlife ate my perennial flowers every year, so to spite them I planted spring onions all around the house where flowers should go, and the onions grow unmolested and naturalize into huge crops, ready just now. An Asian cookbook showed me several new and strange recipes using scallions and other store-bought vegetables and fruits I'd bought too much of, simply because spring makes me do that, and I had to get cooking today.

In the photos, please see:

Korean Stir-Fry Noodles (cabbage, carrot, mushroom, scallions, with bean thread noodles and black sesame seeds); Hot and Sour Soup (with tofu cubes); Scallion Flatbread (unleavened, skillet-fried); and Two-Banana Salad made with bananas and banana peppers, thus its name; a taste sensation with lime juice and soy sauce, it definitely requires the use of bananas less ripe than mine, and chopped peanuts to top it off; it was the day's only misfire. Asian Asparagus-Spinach Salad I'll make tomorrow; today I made one familiar recipe, the Italian-flag Antipasto Bowl with steamed asparagus and mozzarella. Also shown, an inspirational bunch of homegrown scallions.

Hope

Our worm farm was a failure. We did everything by the book. But when we dug into it, no worms, although we'd put lively squirming ones in with our bare hands. Lovingly. We loved worms; good for the garden. I said to Demetrius, "Some of them must have been male, some female." He said, "I guess they never met." Later I learned that worms are hermaphroditic, male and female both, but all the same they have to meet another worm or it's no dice.

Hope springs eternal. Lately I've wanted to feel more hopeful. Nothing serious, just a little down, despite trying everything to cheer myself at this best time of year, before it's buggy or hot, when all is potential. Owls call to each other. Hawks call to each other. Bluebird pairs hang around in the twin oaks for a day or so, but none have settled in my bluebird house as of yet. All perennial. All go on with or without me. I went to my favorite grocery store, quite a distance, to distract myself with produce, and there my eyes met a rack of seed packets. This was the answer. It was like pulling a lucky card from a deck.

So I weeded and dug up and turned a patch of earth 3 feet by 3, meeting some lively or indignant wiggler worms along the way, and finding perennial spring onions I'd forgotten about, and uprooting a whole aromatic handful to slice and throw into dinner. I raked furrows into the earth, and planted arugula seeds. It's the right time to plant, according to the packet: "two weeks before the last frost." Bunnies and deer don't eat arugula, because it's peppery. That's why I like it. There is no pleasure like seeing seeds you planted sprout. They do so no matter how moody we are.

Then I looked around some more and saw rebel grape hyacinths I didn't plant, I never planted, completely wild, blooming in the leaf-covered gravel apron, in very poor, rocky circumstances.

Come Get You Some Spring Onions!

Spring's slow in coming, families down the road still scraping flood mud outa their houses, and 4 inches of rain in past 7 days. . . while walkin with my head down I saw: Spring Onions! Yes! And suddenly life was real fine!

Everyplace I saw their thin little round stems (with purple lower down) in the grass, I yanked, and secured some real nice ones, even this early in the season. They're scallions, but a lot smaller and thinner, with bulbed ends. They don't grow in fields or woods. Look in what grass you have and you might find some. First crop of 2008! I'd better go down to the creek and see if there's fiddlehead ferns yet!