Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. It’s worth acknowledging all the positive changes that have been enacted over the last 50 years – the enacting the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, endangered species like the bald eagle have rebounded from the brink of extinction, rivers are no longer on fire and don’t run the color of whatever the upstream dye factory happens to be producing on a given day, and renewable energy options…
This past weekend my boyfriend and I went for a walk to gather stinging nettle for dinner, and came across a large patch of young garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) as well. One of best parts about picking garlic mustard as a wild edible is that it’s also incredibly invasive, like Japanese knotweed and autumn olive. So you’re doing the ecosystem a favor when you harvest it. In fact, one of my wild edible books describes garlic mustard as “universally despised…
This book was a beautiful blend of detailed botanical science and a deeper connection with nature. In Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, Robin Wall Kimmerer takes readers on a journey into a part of our landscape that is so frequently overlooked and ignored due to its small size, and she inspires a new respect and admiration for the small wonders of the world. Personally, I’ve always been rather enamored with mosses: how vibrantly green they shine…