February Blues

February. I know the foraging season really only starts in late March, but somehow I can't help myself. I start looking for signs of spring around mid-february and dream of all of the great foraging, wildcrafting and canning I will do in the coming season. The pagans celebrate Imbolg, which corresponds to the Christian Candlemas; occasions meant to recognize the faint stirrings of spring in the bleak landscape. However, early spring comes earlier to the british isles than to the Eastern United States, and the traditional date of February 2 is simply wishful thinking. Still, in a mild winter, the spring alliums always betray the calendar and send me into a premature spring fever.

Today I forced myself to take a walk. On my lunch hour at work, I opened my eyes again to the growing things around me. Its comforting to know, however, that even in the bleak grey of a mid-winter's day, there are things to see and taste and experience. I found a shrub laden with highbush cranberry. This is the bastard form however, and it's way too bitter to eat. Its been a mild winter so the birds avoid it when choicer options exist. In the cracks and crevices of concrete, chickweed, henbit and pennsylvannia bittercress make their usual appearance. The eastern white pines that flank the eastern side of the lot always seem to shine in the sun and remind me of the sweet and comforting tea that have sustained many a native american in the winter, and provided an antidote to the scurvy suffered by the pilgrims.

The commercial landscaping that surrounds our building is comprised of sad and useless shrubs and trees. Barren cherry trees that produce stunning flowers, but no fruit. The hated bradford pear. The dreaded arbor vitae and a few creeping juniper. With so many starving people, why wouldn't we use the available space to plant edibles that can be both beautiful and funtional? Incedentally, on the edges of the lot are a few uncultivated fruit trees that go underutilized year after year. A decent crabapple tree which I have made liquour from, a fantastically huge cherry tree that made equally fantastic jam, black cherry trees by the score, an apple tree that puts out pitted but delicious apples every September. A mulberry tree that fruits prodigiously in May, and even a raspberry bush. Beautiful, functional, declicious and FREE for the taking. I blame our litigious society. Lord forbid someone slip and fall on an apple. And the mess that mulberries make...

Why do we drive to the grocery store in July to buy imported blueberries from Michigan when New Jersey is the blueberry capital of the east? I know the local food movement is gaining momentum, but it needs to become as local as under your feet and in your backyard.

Not to mention that it is illegal to forage for a single dandelion in a park. Lord help the ranger who comes upon me as I pick garlic mustard and demands I leave the natural flora alone. Should I explain about the damage that garlic mustard is doing to our native wildflowers or just tell him that my pesto wouldn't be the same without it?