walking past a salsify-eating cockatoo

It's just great that Penny has recovered from her gastroenteritis and I can walk along without stressing about whether she's scouting for food. (She always is, but I'm hopeful she won't make herself sick.)

As we stepped onto a path today, I noticed a cockatoo in the distance. Penny didn't, because she was nose-down checking out for edibles. Or good smells.

We approached, and the bird flew up into a nearby tree, holding something in its beak, and then nibbled on the plant it was holding.

I wish my phone could take a better photo, but if you zoom it up a bit, I think you'll see that it wasn't a grass stem. It was something more substantial. Inquisitively, I looked around to see what the plant might be. And there was a clue...

And lots more clues, actually - clumps of stems bent down and snapped off, all along the edge of the path. Also, a clump that hadn't yet been attacked...

Salsify. How interesting. It's considered a weed in Australia, but recently I've discovered it is edible.

Once we moved further away, the cockatoo landed on the path again and, after considering the available plants, decided on a big grass seed head, which it took up onto the old tree to eat.

Penny and I headed home for our own breakfast, and I'm pleased to say that Penny is now eating her normal range of food, instead of being limited to a 'gastro' diet.

dogs and edible weeds

In the park the other day I was intrigued to see Penny investigating a patch of mallow.

I'm super interested in edible weeds lately, and thought maybe Penny had joined me in the search for free comestibles. (Just had to dash across to Dictionary.com to check whether I'd used this word correctly, because it's the first time I ever got a chance to write it!)

Here's Penny investigating the mallow.

Here's a closer look at her and the weeds:

But wait a minute! What was her rear end doing? Oh, no, that's why I don't gather edibles from the dog park.

She was eating weeds soon afterwards - her favourite - grass. I hope she checked first that no one had peed on it.

weeds can be good guys

Since I attended yet another 'edible weed walk' recently, this one led by Adam Grubb, I'm on the lookout for these helpful intruders (weeds, that is).

And when Penny and I headed home from the local railway station, after our regular Monday walk to see Human Number Two off on the train, we paused to glance into this piece of  waste land. (You can just see the tips of Penny's hair at the bottom of the photo.)

Weeds are so good at helping Mother Nature to fix the injuries we humans do to her skin. I've been reading a pdf of a book written in 1950 about the discovery that weeds are our friends, not our enemies. The writer, Joseph A. Cocannouer, must have been brave to pioneer an appreciation of weeds in an age when most farmers and gardeners had declared war on them. The book is called Weeds; Guardians of the Soil, and I recommend it to every gardener and farmer. (It's a free download.)

I guess it was a Very Good Day for Penny today, because she went on two walks. In the afternoon we came across a lovely example of a wild brassica, but I didn't know which one it was, so I brought it home to wash it thoroughly and taste it. Delicious. We also found lots of pine needles, which I'm going to spread across the pot of blueberries as a mulch.

Here's the brassica.

Mother Earth bandages her wounds with weeds

At a recent talk by John, at Edible Forest Gardens in Wonga Park, he spoke about the damage we do to the soil when we dig or disturb it in any way. From what I understood, he said that Mother Earth has to bandage the wound when soil is uncovered or disturbed, and what we call 'weeds' are the first line of defence.

Yesterday we walked with Penny in Darebin Parklands, and part of the area we passed had been cleared, presumably for revegetation with indigenous plants. I was interested to see the baby wattles growing there, because I remembered John saying one of the first 'fixes' for naked, broken soil is plants that can add nitrogen to the ground, eg wattles.

I wondered what these seedlings would turn out to be:







Further along, beside the creek, there was another array of weeds, this time not native plants. (I couldn't help noticing many of them are edible.) It's fascinating to see them  trying to fix the nakedness of the soil. I guess they will eventually be removed, because the aim is to cover the ground with indigenous plants.

I guess they'll help build soil nutrients. The issue would be whether this is the type of nutrition the indigenous plants need.

goji berries and African boxthorn

I walked in Darebin Parklands without Penny this morning, because I was taking part in a 'mini retreat' to learn more about mindfulness. It was lovely to walk mindfully, using my three senses - hearing, sight and feeling/touch/body awareness. When I'm with Penny the time seems to rush by unexamined, as she dashes from place to place.

I came across an African boxthorn, a really pestiferous weed in Australia, and dared to try out a theory I have that the fruit is the same as the much-admired goji. I ate one, and it tasted nice, even sweeter than the gojis in my garden. Of course, there's the likelihood that the plant had been sprayed with poison, but I thought it looked as if it had not been.

Later, when Penny and two of us humans returned to the park, I persuaded Human Number Two to also try out one of the fruit, and so far we're unharmed, lol.

BTW, I had taken the precaution of rechecking my facts about African boxthorn and felt reasonably sure it was a goji-relation.

ADDITIONAL NOTE 11 MAY 2015: I'm not sure that African Boxthorn is safe to eat. I think it's too risky until I can find out more.

I wonder if it would be good for the park if everyone took home lots of these nutritious fruit, so the birds don't continue to seed them all around the place. (They're frightfully expensive to buy.)

Of course, the better course is to get rid of the plants entirely.

learning about 'qi kai cai' when walking with my dog

I love words, as you might know if you've ever popped over to my other blog.

I also love gardening, and particularly enjoy finding out about edible weeds. And I love walking with Penny.

How fortunate, then, that all these interests came together as Penny, her Other Human and I headed back from our walk at Willsmere on Sunday. We spotted a sign saying 'Hays Paddock' and saw people walking towards it with dogs on lead. Of course we had to suss it out.

Once we arrived, we realised it was the site of the famous playground designed for children with disabilities to have fun alongside children with no disabilities, and we thought perhaps it might not be the best place to take a dog, so we prepared to head off home. (However, a look at the City of Boroondara website shows that dogs can exercise there off-lead, which, when you think about it, is logical, because children with disabilities are quite likely to have a family dog.)

'Stop!' I cried as we drove past a woman crouched on the grass, digging up weeds. A chance to learn about edible weeds from a woman who seemed to be Chinese! Well, actually that was poetic licence on my part - seeing I was the driver, I didn't have to shout 'stop'.

Parking the car a short distance away, I hurried over and found she was happy to share her knowledge. She was digging up little flat plants, and gave me a couple to take home. I've put them in seed-raising mix to see how they grow.

After a look through some of my books about weeds, I concluded the plants are shepherds purse. I think we have them growing in our back lawn, but I'll have to wait until these ones flower to be sure, because the ones in the lawn have seed heads on them.

A couple of sites on the internet have interesting information about the use of this plant in Chinese cooking.  Here's one about the use of qi cai in wontons. And here's an extract from a book with a short piece about them.

I have many new experiences when I go out walking with Penny. Thanks, Penny!