"Here comes Spring!" cheer
the people of temperate North America. Winter is gone and summer
is around the corner. Rejoice! Celebrate! What went under the
earth is emerging again. Not dead, but eternally returning from
the darkness into light.
Demeter laughs and the snowdrops giggle. Persephone comes home
to her Mother and the crocuses blush. Nights are still cold
and snow may yet come, but Spring will not be stopped.
The first spring greens in my yard and woods are wild members
of the onion family: garlic grass and wild leeks. They glow
green against the somber hues of the forest floor in the brilliant
sunshine of spring before the leaves have emerged from the trees
to filter the light down to a warm verdant glow.
Garlic grass looks and tastes like chives, to which it is closely
related. Wild garlic grass is quite a bit smaller and finer
than cultivated chives though; and it doesn't have a purple
flower either. But the garlicky smell will tell you that you've
found the right plant if you break a piece off and sniff it,
or just crush some of the leaves. Since there are no poisonous
plants that smell like garlic and have thin, hollow, tubular
leaves, I consider garlic grass one of the safest wild edibles
to search out and eat. Look for it along roadsides, in vacant
lots, wet lawns, and damp woods. If you've ever smelled garlic
when mowing the grass, you've smelled garlic grass.
I use garlic grass just as I would use chives: I snip the hollow
leaves very finely and add them to salads, herb butters, soft
cheeses, soups, and beans. Yummy! And I make garlic grass vinegar;
it's magical if you adore garlic as I do. Just snip some garlic
grass (or chives, or even leek tops) into a glass jar; cover
completely with apple cider vinegar; wait one week and use.
(And I do mean "snip." Garlic grass is usually too
tough to cut with a knife into the tiny pieces you want, so
use a pair of scissors and snip! it up.)
You'll have to go for a walk to find wild leeks, though; they
won't grown in your lawn like garlic grass. Wild leeks are also
called bear grass, or ramps. While garlic grass is small and
strongly scented, ramps are large and so incredibly, indelibly,
outrageously aromatic that you will never, ever forget the odor
once you encounter it. As one wit put it: "Ramp eaters
make stinkin' lovers."
The sight of a patch of ramps spilling down a damp, rocky hillside
in the early Spring is one that always brings an enormous smile
to my face. They taste so good. They look so lush. Wild leek
leaves are as wide as my palm and as long as my hand, or a little
longer. If you dig beneath the rocks they prefer to grow among,
you'll find a sizeable bulb that smells and tastes even more
garlicky than the leaves. But don't look for flowers. Wild leek
flowers are lovely, but they don't appear until the heat of
summer yellows and kills the leaves.
Wild leeks are especially cherished because they provide food
at a time when little else is growing, when dried foods have
been eaten or gone moldy, and lack of snow cover makes hunting
hard. I was told this story by a grandmother many years ago.
Long ago, in the month called "Starving Moon," seven
native women went out to search for food. "Look!"
said the youngest, whose eyes were very sharp. "There are
green leaves over there by the spring."
They made their way in the direction she pointed and were delighted
to find a large area covered by lush green leaves. Cautiously,
they smelled a crushed leaf. And smiled. Eagerly, they tasted
the leaf. And broke out in a excited laughter. This was food!
Curious, they used their digging sticks to loosen the muddy
rocks from around the leaves. A pink stalk went down to a crisp
white bulb. One bite told the story. Soon seven women were kneeling
and digging and filling their baskets with this marvelous new
food.
But when they returned to the village, people turned away from
them, held their noses, and made faces. And when they cooked
their new food, their husbands and children refused to eat it.
"It stinks!" they proclaimed.
The women were not put off. They liked the new food. In fact,
they were powerfully drawn to it. They returned to the place
where they had found it and harvested more as soon as they were
able. This time, they were turned away when the reached the
outskirts of the village. "You stink!" the children
cried. The women made a nice fire, by themselves, cooked their
delicious meal, and ate it, by themselves.
Shortly thereafter, they went again to the ever-so-attractive
patch of green. They dug roots and rinsed them in the nearby
stream. They knew not to go home with their prize. So they took
their biggest cooking pot, filled it full of the sharp-tasting
plant, and carried it up the highest mountain they could climb.
They could hardly wait to eat. But when they lit their fire,
and the odor wafted out, the mountain was so offended it erupted,
shooting the women, pot and all, right up into the heavens.
When the night is dark, and the sky is clear, you can see the
seven of them, up there cooking their wild leeks. Astronomers
call them the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, but we know who
they really are and why they are up there among the stars.
Women crave garlicky plants. Why? Garlic is well-known as a
healer of the heart, a reducer of cholesterol, and a friend
to the blood vessels. But I get the sense that garlic -- and
its sisters onion, chives, garlic grass, leeks, shallot, and
ramps -- also nourish and heal the uterus and other pelvic organs
with hormone-like constituents that women naturally crave.
You don't have to go the to stars to find garlic sisters. Look
in your yard; take a walk in the
woods; use your nose and you will find them. Spring smells like
garlic! There are green blessings everywhere.
Susun S. Weed is an internationally known author and teacher.
To learn more about her, visit;www.susunweed.com.
