riverside changes

Last Saturday we took a walk down by the Charles River. Inspired by photos of snowdrops emerging in Brooklyn, I searched for signs of spring. No new green shoots yet - Brooklyn, in my experience, is usually two or three weeks ahead of Boston with snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils. Changes are happening at the banks o' the Charles, just not green ones. The public walking paths have suffered recently due to the felling of large trees by strong stormwinds. So pedestrians have carved new paths around the deadfalls and through the woods, and the warming ground and recent rain makes these unofficial muddy paths excellent bootsuckers. Entire root systems of these fallen trees are exposed, leaving craters in the earth. Dozens of robins tossed about in the leaf litter, and a few braved the chilly puddles for a refreshing bath.

Here's my list for the half-hour walk:

red-breasted merganser
mallard
black-capped chickadee
Canada goose
brown creeper
downy woodpecker
American robin
mute swan

I can't wait to see green things growing again!

January thaw and ramblings

We were meeting some friends at the park on this glorious 60-degree day. They hadn't arrived yet, so I told Flash we'd do a little nature walk and see what we could notice. We gingerly skirted 1000x goose poops and found the last patch of unmelted snow. Then he ran over to me holding a stick, saying, "Look, Mama, I found some nature!" 

Later in that park I saw a blue jay with no trace of blue. He was a dull off-white with the telltale chinstrap, crest, and strong beak, but no blue on front, sides, or wings. I didn't get to see the back. I may go back to get a better view. I kick myself every time I leave my third floor apartment without binoculars, because with a three-year-old, I am not going back up for them!

On the way home, we saw a great blue heron flying leisurely overhead. It had one primary feather missing from each wing.

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!