Finding Beauty in Our Own Backyard

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Saturday’s bird watching and foraging tour was a mediation of sorts. Janet Crystal and David Craft helped us to slow down and observe all that was there—the beauty, abundance, resilience and mystery of nature—in our urban park. While the birds were elusive, hidden in the trees and brush, the wild plants were ever present. Thank you to Janet and David for opening up our eyes to the beauty and wonder around us. For more about local wild plants, see David Craft’s Urban Foraging, available on Amazon. For a fuller description of our morning, see Mary Holbrow’s: http://www.cctvcambridge.org/MagazineBeachWalk

Here is what we saw or heard. A visual catalog of some of our sightings follows.

Birds:

• American Goldfinch, Black-capped Chickadee, Gray Catbird, House Sparrow, Mallard (female), Red-tailed Hawk and Song Sparrow

Plants: Asiatic dayflower, aster, black-eyed susan, burdock, cattail, chicory, clematis, goldenrod, hibiscus, Japanese knotweed, jewelweed, milkweed, mugwort, Joe Pye weed, lady’s thumb, phragmite, purple loosestrife, ragweed and tansey

You can eat the young leaves of chicory and make “coffee” with the roots.

Aster

You can eat the young shoots and green flower stalks of cattails before they turn brown.

Boneset, with its white flowers and connected leaves, is poisonous to humans but used in traditional medicine.

Horse or meadow mushroom

Burdock, used in Japanese and macrobiotic cooking

Japanese knotweed is invasie. The bees love it, though, and the stalks are tender in the spring and great for pickling.

Note the thumbprint on the leaves of lady’s thumb.

The whole Asiatic dayflower is edible. The flower is pretty in salads.

Mugwort can cleanse energy

Gray catbird

Gray catbird hiding in the goldenrod.