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Story of the Day

Resources, stories, mysteries, and tales of adventure for naturalists, adventurers, and woods-wanderers.

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Why Nature Connection? Part 1

1/20/2015

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They had sized each other up in that more-or-less anxious way that kids do. By the end of the first game, slipping and tumbling and chasing each other, each had mapped the lay of the land, the constellation of kids and leaders. There were bold ones, goofy ones, ones who danced contentedly around the periphery, and one or two who were unsure: self-conscious, almost nervously observant of the others.

It was a mild and humid winter day, the snow just a few inches deep and pleasingly soft. We wrapped up our game, the group already rosy-cheeked and impressively bedraggled. Just a few minutes after hoisting backpacks and stepping onto the forest path, a coyote trail tempted us from the trail and into the thickets.

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Friendly plants of my driveway

9/4/2014

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Remember that Joni Mitchell song about paving over heaven? Imagine someone paving over a meadow back when Joni recorded 'Big Yellow Taxi' back in 1970. That meadow is now my driveway. I live in a very old building with a couple of different apartments in it, and the driveway accommodates three cars on a regular basis. Who knows how many exhaust pipes have coughed lead-laced fumes into the gravelly earth, or how many fluids have leaked from cracked gaskets. Who knows the trash that has languished there and bled icky juices into the dirt, what dog poop has been smeared, what pesticide residues persist. Turns out, though, that heaven isn't so easy to squish.
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Plantain aka Plantago major. Followed European settlers across the water. Likes to be stepped on. Very safe edible and first aid plant, but make sure you harvest from a clean place. Apply a leaf poultice to abrasions, rashes, stings, bites, or irritated skin. The long, upright seed stalks bear seeds that are edible and very mucilaginous. Plantain seeds (different species) are what metamucil is made of!
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The leaves of plantain are edible, but I personally don't find them tasty. Best time to eat is in the spring when they are tender and young. Look for a basal rosette, entire leaves, parallel leaf veins, and veins that are tough and elastic-y when you pull the leaves apart. Has a close cousin, Plantago minor, who is also awesome but not in my driveway.

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On Thanksgiving

10/17/2013

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Slow dawn walk to my sit spot.
I've been feeling some self-applied pressure to post something about Thanksgiving, as gratitude is a value we try to role model consistently at Jumping Mouse. As the Facebook and blog posts full of concise and lovely expressions of gratitude pitter pattered down over the weekend, accumulating gently like tiny hailstones from an October cloudburst generated by a fast-moving low-pressure weather system, I felt reluctant to join in. And, understandably I think, reluctant to surrender any more of my Thanksgiving hours to my laptop's unblinking gaze. So I took to my sit spot, and the woods, and the meadows, and the gravel pits, and the family suppers of my hometown of Chelsea, Quebec.

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    Author

    Hi everyone! I'm a small, energetic mammal. I sometimes go by the name Zapus hudsonicus.

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