The Licorice Flower

Exploring my new yard has led to many lovely surprises, and this week I discovered one more. There’s a flower I’ve been trying to grow for years: anise hyssop, or Agastache foeniculum (pronounced ag-ah-STACK-ee foe-NIK-yoo-lum). It’s a medium-sized, licorice-scented plant with spikey purple blossoms that are supposed to be very attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds. Over the years, I’ve probably bought four…

Happiness Grows on Trees

In the weeks since I moved to my new home, I’ve been trying to spend some time getting to know my new neighbors–and not just the human ones. My new backyard is filled with animals and plants that I never saw at my old place, even though it was just a few miles from here. I’ve been…

Wild Fruit

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything about foraging. Once the garden started coming into its own this spring, I felt less of the urge to snoop through the tufts of wild greens encircling the yard in the hopes of finding something edible. Eating from the garden just seemed…well, easier. Until now. It…

Delicious Mouse-Ear Chickweed

Since it’s been so warm this winter, I’ve been out poking about the garden more frequently than usual for this time of year. And since the only hardy crops I have so far are Egyptian walking onions, garlic, and strawberries–none of whom offer particularly splendid winter displays–I’ve been forced to direct my plant-starved eyes to…

Wild Garlic

This summer and fall, we’re going to have plenty of members of the Allium family available for harvest: Australian Brown onions, purple bunching onions, Egyptian walking onions (!), Inchelium Red garlic, and even some supermarket green onions, planted in the garden after being found limp in the crisper drawer last summer. They brightened up and…

Another edible weed!

Last weekend I wrote a post asking if anyone could identify a certain wild plant intermingling with the chickweed in my garden beds. No one seemed to have any ideas, so I took another stab at identifying it. And this time I found it easily–once I looked in my French guide to wild flowers. It…

Identify this wild plant!

If you read my Jan. 15 post, you know I’ve recently become an enthusiast of chickweed, an edible wild green that’s been taking over my garden beds since last autumn and tastes superb! There’s another little plant that’s made a good showing in the garden, but I’m having a hard time finding its name or…

Chickweed!

This weekend has brought our first daytime temperatures below 40°F, and though a few of last autumn’s leaf lettuces are hanging on, they aren’t growing at anywhere near a harvestable rate. Not having planted any kale or mustard greens in the fall (note: do this next year), what can we put in the salad bowl…