Wild Strawberries!

a clump of wild strawberries near the magnolia stump

My heart lifts to see the wild strawberries flowering! Their fruits are delicious to chipmunks, squirrels, birds and people; their leaves make a good, medicinal tea. It turns out that you can cook with these leaves, too. Check out this old recipe from Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (1931):

Gather strawberry leaves on Lamas Eve, press them in the distillery until the aromatick perfume thereof becomes sensible. Take a fat turkey and pluck him, and baste him, then enfold him carefully in the strawberry leaves. Then boil him in water from the well, and add rosemary, velvet flower, lavender, thistles, stinging nettles, and other sweet-smelling herbs. Add also a pinte of canary wine, and half a pound of butter and one of ginger passed through the sieve. Sieve with plums and stewed raisins and a little salt. Cover him with a silver dish cover.'

Lamas Eve is the last day of July, traditionally the night before the harvest begins. So you all have plenty of time to put together a distillery, source your canary wine, and fatten up a turkey.

In other news, I was delighted to lead a welcome mat workshop with a group from the Poughkeepsie Landing on Monday. And yesterday, Jess, Elana and the team from the Arc finished the last of our planter boxes—27 in all! The next step is to connect them with a handrail, creating a far more accessible garden.