This is a newsletter by Haley E.D. Houseman, full of nature writing. Thanks for your support, always, whenever. If you like this newsletter, please feel free to forward and share. And you can always say hi directly at @hedhouseman.
Last week I finally threw out my last jar of violet simple syrup. It had turned a while ago, but I was feeling guilty for foraging more violets than I could actually consume. Foraged food always feels more precious to me, which is why I have to have a stern conversation with myself about the morels I dried in the spring as well.
I have begun to develop a bit of a reputation in my neighborhood for oddness about plants. It’s sleepy u-shaped cut out into the forest of older baby boomers and young families. Every lot has a lawn in various stages of green, but tended for the most part with a resolute uniformity that is disconcerting to me, a person who grew up with a large yard full of tangles, where I played “Lion King” in the long grass and ate honeysuckle. Surrounding us on every side are young, boggy woods, the history of the land here being all unfilled fens and farmland. Despite all attempts at eradication, every lawn has a wild tangle of dandelions, onion grass, garlic mustard and violets.
The reputation I have is of being a bit of a thief, though I always ask permission.
It’s considered a little unusual to pick edible things out of suburban lawns, though if not treated with weed killers, it’s not so different from the woods out behind our houses. I find the best onion grass where the woods meets our fence, at least. For violets, I knocked on the door of an elderly woman and her not-young daughter, who have the biggest lot in the U, stretching across the middle of the neighborhood with a vegetable garden and fruit trees. I steal their currants, a few at a time for a dogwalking snack, when they poke through the fence. But last year the back lawn was so filled with violets, I couldn’t help myself. I knocked and asked if I could pick a basketful for syrup. The answer is always a shrug, and an odd look, and an “I guess!”
My first fall here was an excellent one for mushrooming. I found a cache of chicken of the woods in the park big enough to keep me in mushrooms for weeks, even when picked frugally. My neighbor who I knew best developed a suite volleyball-size puffball mushrooms in her front yard, which she graciously though bewildered gave me permission to take. This past year though, absolutely nothing. Not in the spots from last year, not in the new spots I had scouted. The year was too warm and too dry. I thought a lot about how climate change was going to cost us so much more than we were prepared for.
And then, like magic, another neighbor had a growth in her front yard after a particularly wet week. They were beautiful, these mushrooms, covered in tawny honeycombs and some as big as my hand. After a lot of Googling, I was very sure these were morels. I was sure enough to knock on the door, knowing full well I was already well known to her as the woman asked permission to spend every morning in June picking mulberries off the tree next to her driveway. The nice thing about a reputation is that when deployed correctly, it circumvents explanation. The morels were mine, though it took an enormous amount of convincing in the kitchen to feed them to my partner. There’s still a few left, dried patiently in and oven, best for risotto. They are extremely precious to me even unconsumed, a memory of a day that felt like pure serendipity when I was convinced there could be no more.