The Thistle and the Butterfly

 

Snake Berries

When I was young, my mother would sometimes send my brother and me into the fields to pick wild strawberries.

We were always admonished to watch out for the snake berries.

Snake berries look like strawberries. The biggest difference is that strawberries grow so that the fruit hangs down, while a snake berry grows so that the fruit points up toward the sky.

Mom always said snake berries were poisonous. 

This is actually called Potentilla indica or Duchesnea indica as its scientific name. It is most often called a false strawberry or mock strawberry. I have no idea where my mother learned to call it a snake berry but apparently others do too, as I was able to find this information by typing in that name. It is also sometimes referred to as an Indian strawberry (no clue why).

This berry is not indigenous to the US and apparently was brought into the country from Asia. It's considered an exotic invasive species. It must be hardy since it is all over the place around here.

Apparently it is not poisonous but also not very tasty. Mostly it is considered a weed.

Here are resources:

https://kids.niehs.nih.gov/topics/natural-world/wildlife/plants/false-strawberry/index.htm

https://www.wildernessarena.com/food-water-shelter/food-food-water-shelter/food-procurement/edible-wild-plants/duchesnea-or-indian-strawberry

Found Geronimo's Rifle

My husband set out today to visit the big bad world, leaving me here to watch the home fires.

I worried terribly the entire time he was out. He doesn't want me out in the world right now because I have asthma and seem to catch a virus every time we drive by the elementary school. Better to hole up and wait it out.

He was doing routine things, of course. He took the dump truck to the garage for a state inspection sticker.

Then he went to the grocery store, where he came home with a multitude of items, many not on the list, like Little Debbie cookies, pork chops, etc. He said the shelves were bare in many places but fortunately we've enough staples. I'd sent him after fresh fruit and perishables, not Geronimo's rife or toilet paper.

Mostly he ventured out because he needed a medication refill, and the drugstore is inside of the grocery store. We felt like if he was going out, he may as well pick up some food items while he was there.

Fortunately, he did a good job and came home with most of what I needed. He shopped for his mother, too.

He said the biggest problem was the lack of items on the shelves and the fact that he seldom does the food shopping so he doesn't know where anything is.

I made him dump the groceries on the doorstep. I wiped each item off with an antibacterial wipe before I put it away, and washed my hands probably 8 times while I was doing that. He ate his lunch in the garage off of a paper plate. I tried to stay six feet away from him, which is rather hard when you're used to throwing yourself into someone's arms.

Then he loaded the truck up with our trash and headed off to the landfill. Not long after he left, I received a call from my father, who said he was resting on a bed at the Velocity Care because he'd fallen and now had 6 staples in his head. My father is 78 years old. He said my stepmother was in the parking lot and he didn't think he had a concussion, although how you could cut your head that badly and not have a concussion is beyond me.

Some things I have considered today that I hadn't been - the newspaper, which we still receive, apparently is good for holding this virus for 24 hours. I sprayed the front and back pages down with Lysol.

That made me wonder about the mail, since I read that the virus stays on cardboard for 24 hours. Do we not touch the mail for a day? When (if?) a package comes, should I give it a kick into the garage and leave it sitting for a long time before I open it?

I gave my husband orders to strip in the garage, wash his hands, drop his laundry in the washer, wash his hands again, and then take a shower.

He did this, and also wiped down everything in his pockets, including his pocket knife, wallet, and keys, with an antibacterial wipe.

I jokingly told him he didn't have to wash his socks with his pants because I thought the stink there would kill be the virus. He threw them in there anyway. Ha.

So this is our brave new world. For us the biggest changes are trying to be less germy, but we live on a farm and dirt has always been a big part of our world. It is hardest on him, I think, because even though I have complained for 37 years about him tracking in mud, he doesn't stop to take his shoes off.

At least now he is taking off his shoes before enters the house.

Windstorm

I have never seen such wind. I understand there are downed trees every where, lots of power outages. Worst of all, there are forest fires.

The wind is gusting at 60 mph and is expected to last into early tomorrow morning.

We have fence down, but that is nothing in the big picture. One of our neighbors has lost half of his roof - and his house is brand new!

My brother is without power and has been told he will be for DAYS.




Above: Leaves dance across the grass, moving faster than a cheetah.



Above: This is what my view of oak trees looked like yesterday morning.



Above: This is what it looked like at 3 p.m. Note the new addition of cedar where there used to be only grass...



Above: My little well house that covers my well pump has been blown over.



Above: Smoke rises from a forest fire out my front window. I believe that to be in Craig County.

A little lightning

Last night the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed.

Ka-boom! Pow. Zap.

The rain fell and we were grateful. "The millet seed will come up now," said husband happily.

The storm passed and the heavens still watered our fields. The TV, computer - all things electronic - were dead because we had them unplugged.

Wonder of wonders, we chatted for a bit about our day, our vacation plans, and the things we'd missed out in the hustle of the last hectic six months.

The world was rather quiet and I asked husband if he thought it might be OK if I played my guitar. That would be my electric Les Paul guitar.

"I don't hear it thundering," he said. He sat back in the recliner, eyes closed, listening while I spent far too much time tuning.

I played some very ancient songs - Help Me Make It Through the Night, and Leaving On A Jet Plane.

Next up was The Eagles and a bad rendition of Lyin' Eyes. I was strumming along and getting ready to switch from a "C" chord to an "A minor" and ...

Bzaapp.

The amplifier buzzed and had I not had on a guitar strap, I would have dropped my instrument. The electricity ran through the amplifier and into the guitar, where it transferred into my hands.

My left hand, with all four fingers on the strings, took the brunt of the tingling. I immediately unplugged the guitar from the amplifier and set the instrument in its stand. My husband looked up.

"There goes your amplifier," he said mildly, not realizing I'd been shocked. "The storm's back. You'd better unplug it."

It was at that point, as I sat there unmoving, trying to shake the feeling back into my hand, that he realized I'd had a jolt.

I finally got the amplifier unplugged, and not long after we went to bed. My hand, except for my thumb, had stopped tingling by the time I fell asleep, and my thumb was fine this morning.

Let that be a lesson, though - no electric guitar in the thunderstorm.

Truth in Labeling

Recently while I was searching for crackers, I went down the cereal aisle at the local grocer. I usually buy my cereal over in the "organic" section, where nobody has a clue about the brands.

Kellogg's, I noticed, was touting "organic" Rice Crispies and several other brands of cereal. The boxes were about $1.50 higher than the same cereal not so labeled.

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time putting Kellogg's and "organic" in the same sentence. Kellogg's gives us Pop Tarts, after all. Can't get much more non-organic than a Pop Tart.

Organic doesn't mean what it once did thanks to some labeling changes. I think most people think it means "good" and "healthy" and free of chemicals like hormones, pesticides, herbicides, and genetic modification, among other things.

The USDA seems to think organic still means "pure" and good and all of those things. But some people are starting to wonder, particularly when you have a company like Kellogg's' suddenly on the band wagon. I bet they never met a dollar they didn't like.

The government has all of these labels that are supposed to tell us things. It has a website with the National Institute of Health to tell us how to read labels.

I'd like to see some real truth in labeling. Take this bag of Frito's corn chips on the counter in the kitchen. That label says 160 calories a serving. Oh wow, says me, I can dig that. Munch munch.

But wait. A serving is 10 chips. It doesn't say whether that's whole chips or little broken pieces. But there are 15 servings in the bag. So there are 2,400 calories in this bag of Frito's.

Don't you think it should say THERE ARE 2,400 CALORIES IN THIS BAG. Would you buy it if it said that? Maybe not.

The Kraft French Onion dip to go with the Frito's has 60 calories in 2 tablespoons. I don't think 2 tablespoons of dip covers 10 chips. There are 15 servings in the dip, though, so if you can figure out how to spread it out over 10 chips it should all come out even.

There are 900 calories in the dip. Don't you think the dip should say THERE ARE 900 CALORIES IN THIS CONTAINER. Would you buy it if it said that? Maybe not.

Essentially there are enough calories in a bag of Frito's and the accompanying dip to feed one person well for TWO DAYS.

I don't particularly want to live on Frito's for two days. So I should just eat one serving.

I don't normally eat Frito's but I have a really sore throat and a bad cough and I was craving salt. So my husband brought home chips and dip. Wasn't that thoughtful?

I just know he never read the labels.

Trillium

Yesterday my friend J. S. and I took a jaunt to a secret area.

My goal was to see if the trillium was in bloom (you may recall I wrote about earlier jaunts to see the trillium here.). The plants were in full thrall, though some of it looked like it was near the end of its course. The forest floor was covered with the plant; it looked like something out of a fairy tale. A way to an enchanted place, perhaps. Surely there were gnomes and elves and other woodland myths at the far end of this trail of lovelies.







Trillium, according to Wikipedia, has about 50 varieties. I have no idea what variety this particular flower might be. My mother told me that the variety hidden in this vale is rare, and to me it looks like it's trillium ovatum which can't be right because apparently that grows out west, not here in southwestern Virginia.

If you pick a trillium plant, you kill it. It is illegal in some states to pick trillium because it takes years for the plants to come back. Perhaps this wild patch of trillium has been growing for decades. It has been there at least a decade, probably longer. I know of only a few people who would venture into the area in the spring who might have seen it.

I am happy to share it with you.

The Cold Snap

The April cold snap has done a lot of damage to the vegetation. I was at Ikenberry's Monday and G. told me they'd lost about half of their fruit crop.

Apples and peaches will be scarce and expensive this summer, I fear.

This is the view out my window now:



This is what it looked like before the cold snap:



Isn't the first picture scary? I am hoping the trees will recover, but when I was walking Sunday and examining the oaks, I saw little sign of new leaves.

Now we have this odd juxtaposition of dead growth and new growth. It is weird.

I think global warming is misnamed. It should be called global environmental change, because I think that more adequately describes what is happening. The environment is changing.

I wonder if the trees will adapt.