the most wonderful time of the year? almost.

It's that special time of year in a college town like Boston and its environs when everybody is moving into their new dorms and apartments. A lot of stuff gets left behind in these moves as people begin to realize they just can't take it all with them. That's where I shine. I thrill at the combination of free and useful, so I'm keeping my eyes on the Freecycle boards and Craigslist free section for curb alerts in my area. As I mostly get around by bike during the week, I'm limited to what I can fit in a poorly-secured basket on the front of my bike, and it has to be light enough not to upset the delicate balance I have perfected with my toddler in the seat behind me. And of course I don't want to take things just for the thrill, either. I have plenty of stuff sitting around in my home that never gets used; I'm actively trying to Freecycle things away. But there's a certain magic in the air for me right now because not only am I getting something free (ask me about the queen-size bed I cobbled together from three different people totally free when I was pregnant in Brooklyn), but I am doing my part to recycle and reuse perfectly good items that would likely end up in the landfill long before they outlived their usefulness. I'll let you know if I find anything fantastic this time around - happy hunting!

far from the beach

I was just completely unprepared for beach plums this year. I am usually on top of the ripenings of the plants on my radar, but beach plums are new to me, just as serviceberries were earlier this year. Those sneaky town landscapers hid some beach plum plants along the bike path, and I found some bushes heavy with the dime-sized fruits dotting the parking lot near a supermarket I like. I picked a bunch, but just didn't know what to do with them. I found some recipes but they all called for much more than I had harvested. So I ate some fresh, spitting out the tiny stones.

Beach plums are a tasty sweet snack, but I find the skin to be very bitter. I imagine it's delicious sweetened and  in jam form. Now if I can just figure out a simple way to take out the pits and salvage most of the fruit...I will be prepared next year!

berry explosion

It's the most wonderful time of the year - when free foods hang heavy in the breeze, ripe for the picking. In 2010, I lived in Rhode Island and our mulberries were out about three weeks earlier than they are around here. The branches on the tree I've been stalking and calling 'the motherlode' are weighed down so heavily by mulberries that I could never hope to pick all the ones I can reach. I don't have big mulberry dreams this year; last year I made mulberry muffins, granola, yogurt, ice cream, and fruit sauce. I just want to pick enough to take home and eat later in the day. The motherlode tree produces by far the sweetest-tasting mulberries of any tree I've found in the past three years. Mulberries can sometimes taste tart or even watery-bland, but these have a sweet zing to them, especially when they're still warm from the sunshine.

This year's foraging discovery is the serviceberry. The new Watertown Community Path has several serviceberry trees planted along the edges. I've been watching them for about three months. I wouldn't have looked at them twice except for the fact that whoever planted them left the nursery tags on. When I read "serviceberry - edible fruit," I rushed home to do some research and find out how to tell when the fruit would be ripe. Now that the blueberry-like fruits are darkening from purple to blue, I make sure to take a container with me every day. They are sort of hard to pick, because the stem comes off with the berry a lot of the time, and they don't really grow in clusters but are scattered all over the bush. It takes some nimble twisting to get the berries and not the stems, but it's totally worth it. Serviceberries taste sweet and full, like they might be distant, wilder cousins of the blueberry.  Because serviceberries have seeds that seem large proportional to the size of the berries themselves, it makes for a chewier eating experience, and I find myself spitting out seeds that separate easily. I truly enjoyed watching the green bushes ripen this spring, because each one had just a few leaves that burst into oranges and yellows, and because the berries themselves progress through a magnificent spectrum of colors on their way to ripeness. I have never seen a lovelier or more insistent magenta in nature than I have witnessed of late on the serviceberry bushes.

On a biking adventure to Fresh Pond with a friend yesterday, Flash and friend and I found some likely black raspberry plants to which we shall certainly return upon their ripening. We also found a wildflower meadow thrumming with the wingbeats of birds and bugs alike -- I can't wait to return with my binoculars. Well, that's the berry-roundup for June 2011 - thanks for stopping by!

leaf out!

A few years ago I learned that the term for when the leaves start coming out is the "leaf-out." That simple little name tickles me every spring now. If  you want to know more about the leaf-out, check out Signs of the Seasons - they're conducting a leaf-out study and you can participate.

I've been watching this tree outside my bedroom window sprout little green flower-clusters for about four days now. I think it's an oak, but I'm not sure. It was the last tree around our driveway to lose its leaves last year, and now it's the first one to show some spring initiative! A few trees are in flower around here, but most are still ramping up their buds. I saw some honest-to-goodness baby leaves spilling out of their bud-casings today, on a different tree right in my own driveway. Pretty soon we will lose our great view of Boston, but it is totally worth it to see green everywhere for a few months!

Norumbega Park

We've been eager to check out more parks in the area, and Norumbega Park was high on the list due to Chrissy's finding out about the legend of Norumbega from the book Weird New England. Apparently some crazy amateur archaeologist thought (and thought he could prove) that at one point, Vikings lived in Watertown. We had to see for ourselves.

Not a lot of Viking artifacts left in Norumbega Park these days. In fact, there are more artifacts from the time during which it was a popular amusement park, such as lamps growing out of tree-trunks and the foundations of old rides. It's a lovely place to explore, even on such a cold spring day as Saturday was. I enjoyed the chance to witness nature making its progress toward the verdant time of year. Here are some small things I noticed.

 Buds spilling forth into beauty.

 Brown giving way to green.

 An eager tree in bloom.

 An evergreen past its prime.

I mean, look at those folds!

                                                          An obese tree.

 A flower so blue that it's white.












Norumbega Park is a great place to look at stuff. I brought along my binoculars and saw some pretty great things. Here's the day's list:

European starling
American robin
black-capped chickadee
downy woodpecker
red-winged blackbird
wood duck - male and female for the win!
mallard
Canada goose
tree swallow
white-throated sparrow
great blue heron - I saw this guy swoop in, snatch a snake or an eel out of the river, and bide its time with the creature in its beak until it was still enough to choke down. Very cool.
mute swan
chipmunk
squirrel

I also saw some awesome fungi, one of which I really wanted to share with you, but I couldn't get a good photo. What was neat about it was its position: it hung from a nearly-horizontal birch that stretched out over the Charles River. I never saw a mushroom grow down before.

Can't wait to explore more places in the area - got any suggestions?