I was just making sure that my escarole ("scarola in Italian") had enough water, early yesterday morning. But an unexpected surprise led me to learn more than a few things. For starters, escarole is more closely related to chicory than to lettuce. Unlike the latter, escarole has toothed leaves and lacks the milky white sap... Continue Reading →
Birdsfoot trefoil is an attractive relative of a familiar group of species of clovers known as Trifolium, which includes red, white, Swedish, Dutch and nearly 300 other species. Like clovers, it is a useful plant. While it grows on roadsides, it helps control erosion. It feeds both wild animals (geese, deer and elk) and domestic... Continue Reading →
When I was a child, my grandmother taught me how to make arrows from the softwood of a poplar, a tree that was abundant in the woods that we could step into from my backyard. Later in adolescence, biased from the movies that I watched, I perceived arrows to be "primitive". It is another case... Continue Reading →
