It tastes marvelous.  There’s not even a “taste” of green to it.  Just the right amount of sweetness, nuttiness and knowing that I’ve done something really good for myself.

Common chickweed

I’ve been enjoying some fresh salad greens for a couple months — despite the cold wintery weather.  Gradually I am learning which “weeds” are actually edible in a salad.  So . . . with the addition of chickweed, sheep sorrel, bittercress, plantain and oxeye daisy leaves, I’ve had some really great salads.  I added these wild greens to the bits of bok choy, arugula, lemon balm, garlic chives and carrots I’ve scrounged from the winter garden.  Granted, most everything is pretty small right now and I selectively harvest from the wild edibles because I want the plants to flourish later this spring and summer.

There’s no photo of these delicious salads because every time I’ve thought about taking a photo . . . I’ve already eaten the salad!

Do they think it’s spring already??

. . . a frog perched on the stone attempting to move into hibernation.  Well I decided that stone could stay right where it was.  Then I noticed a second frog in the water behind this same stone.  He, too, looked very black.

As I took these photographs, the frog opened his eyes as if to say, “Okay, that’s enough.  I’m ready to hibernate.  Please cover me back up and go away.”

And so I did.

Oh my!  He had managed to catch a bat!  A little brown bat to be specific.  Although, in the photo above, it almost looks like the bat has caught the cat since its wings are covering the cat’s face.

After dropping the bat in the yard, my cat seemed to be less interested in playing with it any more and was willing for me to perform a “bat rescue.”  I put the cat in the house and went back out to see if the bat might survive.

I found the bat had been pretty severely injured and it would not / could not grab a twig I offered it.  I carefully wrapped it in leaves and placed it into the woods.  Even though it was relatively warm today, the night temperature was going to drop to freezing again.  I suspect the bat will not make it.

The only other question remaining was how did the cat capture the bat?  This particular cat loves to climb trees.  Perhaps he climbed a tree and disturbed a resting (beginning to hibernate?) bat.  Any movement from the bat would attract the cat’s attention and I suspect the bat would have been very slow to move since it was cool and sunny.

Rest in peace, little one.

Well, I did not get around to this until after the hips had been drying on the counter for a long, long time.  When I did pick up the knife to slice a rose hip open, I found it was easy to cut.  And I found all those seeds . . . with lots of small hairs which felt like they could be really irritating.

Now that I’ve studied this photo more closely, I see I need to go back and brush off the hairs even more from the hips.  I did nibble a tiny piece of rose hip while working with them and found it deliciously tart — as I had anticipated given its reported Vitamin C content.

. . . I began eating a few each day.  And recently, I had enough ripe muscadines to keep a bowlful at hand.

I love the first burst of sweet flavor followed by lip-puckering tartness.  Spitting out the large seeds reminds me of eating watermelon.

We are now experiencing fall-like weather with wind and cooler temperatures.  So I took a tour of the garden to see how plants are faring as they prepare for the winter season.  I noticed the purple coneflower seed heads were ripe so I spread the seed in the new bed created this summer for them.  Then I noticed the lizard. . .

Can you see it?  The lizard’s tail is on the ox-eye daisy leaf and the purple coneflower seed head is to the upper right.

The nasturtiums are doing well in the new cool hoop house bed.  I’ve been eating an occasional leaf when I stop by.

The comfrey is well established — after transplanting it in the heat of the summer from another friend’s “over-run with comfrey” bed.

This leek looks good.  I wonder if I should harvest and eat it now . . . or let it over-winter?

Aaahh . . . the wintergreen (teaberry) has lovely berries which are ripening.  They will be fun to eat during the winter.

I planted two of these wintergreen plants about three years ago.  They have spread nicely and I’m looking forward to their completely covering this particular garden bed in the future.

Tiger’s Eye — a type of pinto  bean.

Golden Lumen — a type of wax bean.

And Peking Black — a type of crowder pea.

. . . and spread them on the floor to finish drying out.  I had picked them on a damp day — in between rain storms when it looked like it would not stop raining for days.  After the pods were dry, I began the shelling process.

Some of the beans were thoroughly dried out already . . .

. . .  and some were not . . .

Here’s a closeup comparison of the dried beans on the left and the “green” beans on the right.  By the way, these are “Peking Black” crowder peas so they look black rather than the traditional tan crowder pea color.

After the crowder peas have dried as much as they possibly can, I store them in containers for re-hydrating and cooking later in the year.  I appreciate how easy it is to store this food and that it does not require cooking, canning or freezing.  And . . . for any crowder peas which were on the vine so long that they began to look not so appetizing . . . I save them as seed for next year’s planting.