September Farewell

Wild Plants And Wooly Bears


Cobbling together a meal from what I can harvest, catch or grow appeals to my innermost being. From April through September, nature provides plenty of fixings for my wild meals. September’s bounty, although fleeting, has a special charm.

Today serves as a good example of that. My noontime meal consisted of skull-shaped puffballs (wild mushrooms from my woodlot), fillet of lake trout (caught yesterday in a nearby lake) and tender, young green beans from my garden.

These puffballs, like all wild mushrooms, present harvesters with only a short window of opportunity. Pick and enjoy them today, for tomorrow they are gone. Transients on my dinner plate, these mushrooms are.

Togue, or lake trout, bite best in September, given that cool weather arrives sometime in mid-month. That didn’t happen this year, so the fish I caught yesterday was a bonus. Besides that, the lake closes for the season on the first of October. Another year must pass before my next late-season togue-fishing trip.

And green beans, well they have a few weeks left, given that a hard frost doesn’t kill them. A note regarding these beans might prove valuable to others who enjoy green beans. Most varieties (Tendergreen comes immediately to mind) produce well, but after the first few pickings, become fat and generally misshapen. I bought my beans from a place called Vermont Seed Company, located, oddly enough, in Randolph, Wisconsin.

Anyway, these French fillet-style beans are called Straight ‘N Narrow and the name describes them quite well. No matter what, they remain straight and relatively narrow. And, of course, they retain their sweet, mild flavor. A helping of these culinary delights, freshly-picked, has to stand as one of September’s finest treats.

Oh, the ninth month has more going for it than what I have mentioned here. Earlier on, wild cranberries come around. Winter squash become ready for eating and white perch congregate in huge schools, a boon to those who relish their sweet, flaky flesh.

So as September winds down to pave the way for October, I bid it a fond farewell.

A Fish, Some Mushrooms And A Late-September Day

Wild Plants And Wooly Bears


The last week of September means much to me. Trout and salmon fishing on most lakes and ponds ends this month, so the last week is a now-or-never situation. So I go to lengths to take advantage of that last, fleeting opportunity.

This year saw me scheduled for a two-day stint at a remote sporting camp in Northern Maine’s 100-Mile wilderness. Two ponds within walking distance of the cabins hold lots of native brook trout. So as September approached, my thoughts more and more turned to my trip upcountry.

But the weather didn’t cooperate. All reports predicted rain by sometime during the first afternoon, just about the time I was scheduled to arrive. And wind was supposed to pick up too, bad news for someone fly-fishing out of a canoe. So I cancelled my trip.

I woke up this morning crestfallen. But since it wasn’t yet raining, I decided to take my boat to a local lake and try my luck on togue, or lake trout.

I arrived at the place where fish usually congregate this time of year and found the bottom bereft of fish. My fish locator/depth finder failed to indicate even one togue. The wind picked up slightly and it seemed only reasonable to pack it in, to wind in my lines and go, top speed, for the boat landing. But something told me to wait, don’t be hasty. One spot on the west side of the lake sometimes produces fish.

Okay. I zipped over to the last-chance spot and within five minutes of letting out line, my rod tip bounced and I lifted the rod out of the holder and reeled like crazy.

Then the fight began. I knew it was a good fish, from the way it hugged bottom and from how the rod slowly pulsated. After what seemed an eternity, I saw a silvery sheen heading my way. Soon, I made out that it was a lake trout. But then it saw the boat and gained renewed energy, taking off, stripping my reel of line in short, powerful bursts.

But in time the fish tired and I slid the net under it and lifted it in the boat. I was overjoyed. It wasn’t the biggest togue in the world but it was my precious, last-of-the-season fish. I reckoned that it weighed about five pounds, the perfect size for eating.

After arriving home and taking care of my prize, I got a call from a friend who lives on Verona Island at the head of Penobscot Bay. He wanted me to assure him that the mushrooms he had found were indeed puffballs. From his description, I was sure that he had some good, edible fungi.

Later, it occurred to me to go out in my own woods and hunt for puffballs. That variety of mushrooms had been scarce thus far and I wondered if it wasn’t just a case of them being somewhat late. And so it was.

I picked enough puffballs to make two, good meals and headed home, happy and content.

A fish, a few mushrooms and a late-September day in Maine. That’s what it takes to make me happy.

Dandelions and Asters

Wild Plants And Wooly Bears


Soon, the first frost will change our landscape dramatically. But the change won’t just be visual. Plenty of other subtle shifts will occur as a result of freezing temperatures. Among these, dandelions will lose their bitterness. Foragers can then go out, dig the crowns and leaves and have a last fling, as it were, with wild potherbs.

Even better, dandelions appear much larger now than at the same time last year, understandable, given that our season has kept from two to three weeks ahead of itself.

At my place, dandelions grow along the edge of my gravel driveway. Here, I dig them every spring and by fall, new, young plants take their place. Leaving most of the root in place when digging guarantees is all it takes to maintain the crop.

On a melancholy note, a killing frost will signal an end to the incredible flush of color from New England asters. These violet – pink wildflowers were much in evidence this year, more so than in previous seasons.

So go, dig dandelions. Pick a bouquet of asters. And enjoy the glorious fall.

Soapwort's Sweet Fragrance and Stately Beauty

The downward spiral has begun. Well, it began back in June, on the first day of summer. Now, the sun sets a wee bit sooner and rises just a touch later. And one of my favorite wild plants, soapwort, Saponaria officinalis, comes into bloom at this specific sun time.

It took me years to get this lovely flower established at my place. Seeds failed and transplants died. But eventually, I managed to coax two or three plants into existence. And from them, this European biennial took hold and now, it enlarges its territory each year.

Soapwort, so-called on account of its ability to produce soapsuds when placed in a vessel with water and vigorously shaken, has considerable value as an emergency form of soap. It has a gentle effect, like that commercial product that proclaims that babies won’t shed tears if they get it in their eyes.

But I rarely use soapwort as soap. The double flowers, white-and-pink, have a delicious, I’d say Heavenly aroma. Besides that, I just like to look at them. They are wicked pretty.

Soapwort, like most of our other favorite wild plants, has a brief window where it sets flowers, the flowers get pollinated by visiting insects and then produces seeds. The flowering cycle doesn’t last more than two weeks, but during that time the soapwort in front of my house gives me two weeks of sweet fragrance and old-fashioned, stately beauty.

Could anyone ask more of any wild plant?

Dragonflies

Sitting outside my place the other night, a welcome sight greeted me. It was the nightly dragonfly invasion. My two farm ponds prove fertile grounds for these prehistoric insects, a good thing for me.

In midsummer, biting insects descend upon my yard…well, call it a yard. Really, it’s an opening in the woods. Anyway, deerflies and mosquitoes make outdoor living difficult and at the least, less-than-pleasant.

Fortunately, just when that magic time arrives when the sun sinks low behind the tall white pines and the sky turns pink and gauzy-white, the dragonflies come around, picking off insects in mid-flight. Dozens and dozens of these helicopter look-alikes fly anywhere from ground level to perhaps 50 feet in altitude. And as they go, the blessed critters catch mosquitoes and other devilish pests by grasping them with their front legs.

I can just picture how it goes. The dragonfly sees a target, acquires it in its radar (okay, so it doesn’t have radar. But it has some kind of built-in acquisition device) and then ZAP! Gotcha! After being thus embraced, the hapless mosquito is then brought to the dragonfly’s mouth and summarily eaten.

There was a time when I used dragonfly nymphs for trout bait. These are easily gotten by walking along the shore of any small pond and with a hard-toothed rake, bringing bottom debris up on shore and watching as the alien-looking nymphs crawled back toward the water. But that was then. Now, realizing that not only are dragonflies beneficial as mosquito catchers, some species of dragonflies are becoming quite scarce, I wouldn’t think of harming any dragonfly.

For more info on dragonflies and their ultra-colorful cousins, damselflies, I suggest investing a couple bucks in the Maine Dragonfly Survey foldout fact sheet. This, courtesy of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, contains a full written description as well as accurate color drawings of all of the dragons and damsels in Maine.

To learn more, just go to www.mefishwildlife.com.

Don't believe everything you read

A recent trip to a chain bookstore opened my eyes to the vast number of new books about the medicinal virtues of wild plants.

After thumbing through one offered by a well-known national publisher, I was astounded at what lay inside.

Here’s what bothered me the most. The book listed a number of common wild plants, none of which are known for their medicinal properties. In many instances, it seemed that the author stretched the point by listing all the various ills that the plants were supposed to treat. And that seems at best, misleading.

Such books typically target “newbies,” folks who have only recently become interested in wild plants and their uses. So they buy these books and consider information therein as gospel. But this can be terribly dangerous. Here’s why.

Lots of people can’t afford medical treatment for their health problems. Others simply eschew visits to the doctor. For these folks, wild medicinal plants offer hope and in some cases, panacea. But in so many cases, treating a serious condition with some plant that may or may not have any worth is risky business at best.

Even worse, books, not just the new batch of books to erupt out of the “green revival,” but even books of some generations ago, go out of their way to list every conceivable use for any given plant. Typically, we might read something like (I’m making this up, it’s only an example), “Cattail pollen, mixed with water, was traditionally used by Zuni Indians to treat pneumonia.”

In truth, anyone who thinks he or she may have pneumonia should head to the nearest doctor, hospital or clinic, pronto. Delayed treatment means delayed recovery, something that can lead to tissue scarring, not a good thing at all.

Of course lots of excellent wild plant medicines exist out there, but nowhere near as many as some people would have us believe. And worse, some plants can have serious interactions with prescription medications. In other cases, using wild plants as medicine can be dangerous for people with certain medical conditions.

It is always advisable to check with a qualified medical practitioner first before ingesting any wild plant as medicine. And relying on some obscure reference in a book may be even more dangerous.

So think before treating. And don’t believe everything you read.

Thump went the snake

Seeing is believing, so they say. And I surely would not have believed what happened this morning had I not seen it.

Sipping coffee in my kitchen and peering out at my yard, I saw something fall into some perennial plants outside my glass door. It seemed to have some bulk and I though that perhaps a bird had flown into the house and dazed itself. But I hadn’t heard that telltale, “thump.”

Intrigued, I stepped out into the 90-degree heat and looked all around, but saw nothing. Then, glancing up at where the object, or whatever it was had fallen from, I saw something that made me question my senses. There, on a ledge under the roof overhand, was a large garter snake, all coiled up, peering pack at me.

So it must have been another garter snake that had fallen from the ledge into my plants. The two were probably vying for space on the little ledge, when one lost its balance and fell to the ground.

I then remembered seeing a shed snakeskin in a closet area inside my house, directly beneath where the snake currently sat. “So that’s how they get in,” I thought. I took my walking stick and gently prodded the critter, but instead of dislodging it like its companion, it found a crack and made its way into the wall.

Instead of a stick, I should have grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos. Perhaps next time.

Still, the event makes me wonder, how on earth do snakes climb up a vertical wall and not fall off? My place has rough-sawn trim and pine shingles, so both would offer at least a little traction. But I just don’t know.

Nature is full of mysteries, but this one beats all.