When I was a kid, I spent countless hours roaming the surrounding countryside. One of my favorite pastimes was searching for edible stuff. I knew where the one currant bush was and the patch of wild asparagus. I cultivated the back hill's plethora of wild strawberries. I tended the roadside bramble of boysenberries. I snatched grapes from the wild vines and was brave enough to actually eat them. (Wild grapes are SOUR, btw.)
Some of my fondest childhood memories, of which I have woefully few, are of those summer days wandering with my dog, eating what I found. Or searching for things that were rumored to be out there somewhere.
One summer, my brother heard there was a gooseberry bush in the fallow cow field across the road, so off we went in search of it. We never found it, but the hunt sticks in my memory. Another time, the same brother was sure there was a butternut tree in the woods on the other side of the landfill. (Yes, I grew up near a garbage dump. Don't knock it. It was a magical, if stinky, place for a kid.) Off we tromped for that tree. I don't remember if we ever found that one. Part of me thinks we did and another part suspects it was another wild goose chase.
I was heartbroken the day I got home from school to find they'd bulldozed the back hill. I guess they were trying to make it smoother or something, but in one day, they eradicated my strawberry patch. I'd spent hours and hours on that hill, pulling weeds and tending plants. Every spring/summer for several years beforehand. I'm pretty sure I cried. I know I called Mom at work to rat them out, only to find out she okayed it. I'm sure I never felt so betrayed. (I was a kid, though, so I'm sure much worse betrayals came about since.) I talked to Mom about it the other day and she doesn't remember it. She said I never told her I was tending those strawberries, which is probably true. They were my secret garden and my summer feast that I never had to share.
Recently, on a walk, I discovered a patch of blackberries, growing along the barbed wire fence beside the road. I picked the ripe ones and brought them home. There's another patch farther along that isn't ripe yet, but is loaded with berries. I just hope the property owner doesn't come along and cut them down, or mow, or spray for weeds to kill everything on the fence - all of which they've done over the course of the past 12 years. There's also a stand of elderberries that came back after the last cutting and they look like they might fruit this year. Right now they're covered in flowers, so yay.
After we moved here, I was so happy to see what I thought were wild strawberries all over the southwest part of the yard. Except the flowers were yellow. (Strawberries have white blooms.) They're not strawberries. They're mock strawberries. Same leaves, similar but yellow flowers, similar looking fruit - except the fruit isn't tasty. It's pithy and watery. They're so flavorless, even the critters don't eat them. Bleh. (I tried it, trust me.) It was a disappointment, let me tell you.
We also have black cherry trees. Edible, but SOUR and very medicinal tasting - not surprising since they're used to make cough medicine. The critters love those.
I really do wish I had the cornucopia of edible things around this house that I had access to as a kid, even if it's just for the nostalgia of it. Wandering the countryside eating nature's bounty... :happy sigh:
