Nerdnite

Here are the slides for the talk I gave at nerdnite. I brought a bunch of food: boiled acorns, boiled burdock, pickled japanese knotweed, pickled purslane -- the usual fare. Expected to go home with most of it but the crowd ate it up. I mean, the acorns were boiled not nearly long enough to remove all the tannins, but at least one person was loving them anyhow...said they were "addictive". The biggest praise Cambridge acorns have ever received.

Hot potato 2 is coming up. To that end, I will hop the apple fence one last time tonight to see if there are any stragglers left on the ground that have not been beaten too badly by the frosts, and I will step foot into Trader Joe's and plunk down some cash for the cheapest wine in town. Hopefully I'll also find some time to tickle the ivories too. I am working my way through the Goldberg Variations..see how many times I can cycle through the full set this winter. Anything to procrastinate the manual grunt work required for moving into the new apartment.

Not quite Thoreau (thorough)

Thoreau recorded extensive notes of what was flowering/fruiting/etc when. In that vein I'll offer a highly abbreviated recording: black nightshade still to be found, as well as burdock and lamb's quarters and apples.

Dodder

As always with a new plant that I look up, there are conflicting reports on edibility. Last night at a really great lecture by the new director of the Arboretum, I was reminded to look up that orange thread-like plant that grows on other plants along the Charles River. I did, and found it: it is called dodder. Enough web sites say it is edible, and one that even says it's full of beta-carotene. Look out Charles River weird orange parasitic plants!