ETA: I do want to acknowledge and warn that all milkweeds are toxic, and some are more toxic than others. I used common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), which is less toxic than other species, and the blanching process removes toxins. Please be very careful if you try this yourself: look at a number of online foraging sources, and know your milkweed... I speak as someone who once poisoned herself with mushrooms--I don't want to have your illness on my conscience.

Here is the jasmine, so pretty, so fragrant!



And below this cut are before-and-after shots of fried immature milkweed pods. This are very tasty! I've mad them in past years, but this year they're like a garden crop, I have so much in my yard. I've cooked them twice already.

( fried milkweed pods )

And beneath this cut is a portrait of my staghorn sumac tree, plus some sun-brewed sumac tea (or sumac-ade), made by squeezing/bruising the berries, covering them in cold water, and letting them sit out in the sun for a while. The result is very fragrant and mildly sour in a nice way.

( sumac tea )

Good night, all!

Sometime last week, I shared with osprey_archer this image of Fergus the Forager, in his suit made of burdock leaves:



(osprey_archer, someone asked him in comments how he made it, and he said he did it by glueing the leaves to a preexisting cloth suit--so it's not like those leaves had to hold up on their own!)

His whole entry on burdock is fascinating. I knew about burdock root as a food, because I prepared it all the time in Japan. My favorite recipe is kimpira gobo, which I'll share before this entry's done. But he has many other recipes, including candied burdock.

But most interesting to me is his photo of the Burry Man of Queensferry (photo comes from Wikipedia via Fergus's blog)



The Burry Man's suit is made of burrs! He makes his suit and walks a circuit of Queensferry, Scotland, on the second Friday in August. Here's what Fergus shared from Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica

At 9am the Burry Man emerges into Queensferry High Street, carrying two staves bedecked with flowers. He walks slowly and awkwardly with his arms outstretched sideways, carrying the two staves, and two attendants, one on each side, help him to keep his balance by also holding on to the staves. Led by a boy ringing a bell, the Burry Man and his supporters begin their nine-hour perambulation of South Queensferry.
The first stop is traditionally outside the Provost’s house, where the Burry Man receives a drink of whisky through a straw.

The perambulating and the drinking go on all day long, and around 6 pm, he returns to the town hall.

Fergus links to the Wikipedia article about the Burry Man, which includes information about making the suit from one guy who served as the Burry Man for twelve years. The entry also includes speculation about the origins and purposes of the ritual. I just like that it's part of something called the Ferry Fair, which I will now think of as the Fairy Fair, since, come on: this has Fairy Folk written all over it.

Here's a picture of the Burry Man from last year's Fairy Fair:


[Edit from 2018: some of the photos have disappeared in the intervening years...]

And here he is getting his tipple:

Source: 2013 Ferry Fair

Oh! And now that recipe, so this entry isn't entirely cribbing from other sources, or at least not other online sources:


That's cut out from a magazine from which I used to order stuff for delivery from a food coop I belonged with, with my neighbors when I lived in Japan. You got approximately 300 grams of gobo (burdock root) for 298 yen--about $3.00, at the time.

( translation of the recipe )

For lunch today, I ate things I found: a mushroom, raspberries, and chestnuts



How about these lines from the song "Gravedigger," by Dave Matthews, which seajules introduced me to?

Gravedigger, when you dig my grave
Won't you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain

The dead are thirsty.

When the dead walk among the living, the sun shines through clouds of ghost passenger pigeons as through smoky glass.