Urban Foraging

The real key to urban foraging is the right equipment - especially for harvesting roadside berries in ditches. Essential are:


Preferably tucked into long pants.

And, of course, fruit that's ready to be harvested. I managed one out of three. In fairness, though, I set out to buy salad greens at North End Farm. I ended up driving over to Fernwood Beach where I parked the car and went for a walk along Walker's Hook Road. I think this is my favourite spot on the island and would purchase a house here over any place I've been so far.
While walking along the oceanside road looking for things to harvest I saw banks of St. John's Wort in bloom. These grow wild and are also used as ground cover on sloping land. The flowers are gorgeous, though these plants tend to overrun spaces in this climate.


I also spotted a small green tree frog catching the rays and warming himself up.


 I found a few stretches along the road with berries but it was obvious someone had been there earlier. I did manage to snag enough for dessert tonight. On the walk back to the car I spotted an otter fishing for his dinner around the pier on Fernwood Beach. I even got to take a pee in the woods - the perfect ending for this nature experience :)

 This morning, while working in the office there was a swarm (?) of dragonflies outside. There had to be about a dozen all flying around in a cluster. Despite living near a pond I have never seen these many together in one place and they didn't appear to be mating. And the eagles are very noisy today. I have seen a juvenile flying around occasionally and, more rarely, one adult. Today there are two adults and a juvenile doing regular flybys in front of the house. The juvenile just swooped past the office window and landed on the shed roof 50 feet away from where I'm sitting in the house. This is amazing.

A couple of days ago I did a beach walk during low tide and saw my first Lion's Mane Jellyfish. This is not a good thing as their populations are increasing around the world and they are very, very nasty. This one was draped over a rock with it's tentacles floating around in the shallow water, waiting for the tide to cover it again. First aid is rinsing with seawater and getting to the hospital. Do not use fresh water as this will cause the stingers to explode and increase your pain. Do not urinate on the stings. Do not apply vinegar to the stings.