Hi & Welcome

Welcome to my backyard tourism journal, as I go cyber with it and my 2020 discoveries. 

Before I get to the good stuff, let me rattle off a quick introduction:

I'm Jenn! I have a bachelor's degree in computing and the arts from Yale University, am about to complete my Master's in Fine Art at Southern Methodist University, am a former professional figure skater (TeamUSA), did some reality TV in my 20s, and now have 2 kids, 2 cats, a dog, and an ex-husband. I speak 3 languages fairly fluently and have passing knowledge in a few others. I've been fortunate to live many places and travel to many countries. But I'm a Texan -- a Dallasite to be specific -- and that means, home is where the Lone Star Flag flies.

Now back to 2020:

When Stay-at-Home orders due to the CoVid-19 pandemic hit Texas, it was March and I was studying as a grad student, unexpectedly homeschooling two elementary school aged boys, and entirely overwhelmed -- but with a well stocked freezer. 

As time ground on however, that stash of food started to dwindle. My best friend, anticipating this, kept morale up and worry about the speculation of food shortages at bay with surprise bundles of veggies and fruits from the local farmers market. This was the only 'grocery' shopping that seemed safe, and it was incredible how enjoyable it was to receive even vegetables I wouldn't normally purchase perched on my front porch every Sunday.   

This is where the proverbial kernal of this backyard tourist story begins...

It was still chilly outside but spring was coming. And having young kids, I'd seen plenty of 'regrow your lettuce from scraps' botany experiments for the window sil. So, I decided to try to regrow some of my surprise deliveries from their scraps. We (me and my kids) set up a small area at a window in our kitchen and filled fresh, clean plates and bowls with water and arranged carrot tops, and spinach butts...onion tips, and celery bottoms...anything we could find the slightest YouTube tutorial hint on growing from scrap was there, in pretty little rows. 

Meanwhile, quarters were getting tight in the house and a healthy dose of 'mom is in the front yard picking weeds' seemed to be just the trick to obtaining some peace and quiet for a half an hour or so a day...It took me three whole weeks to pluck every single dandelion from my front yard...one, by one! 

As I pecked around that front yard however, the sun starting to warm the air, the bright yellow flowers were popping open, and the particularly concentric dandelion leaf forms began lodging themselves into my memory. Soon I began to think, "I've heard these things are edible...and they sure are plentiful. Heck if there is something that mother nature seems to be giving to people around here to eat, it is DEFINITELY DANDELIONS!"

This thought passed through my mind once....then twice...then just about every time I pulled one from the ground and stuffed it into my (now SECOND) 5 gallon bucket of them -- which I, at the time, just saw as potential compost.

Here I have to admit that although I've grown up in the southwest and taken quite a few trips to Louisiana and across the south, I've never liked greens. It was the texture and the smell and the taste....heck, for a while in my childhood I didn't even like the color! Even up to last year, if I ate spinach, it had to be fresh in a salad or creamed to the point of bare recognition. And there had better not be soggy lettuce in the salad package or I'd toss it. So, naturally, I wasn't quite ready to start stuffing my mouth with dandelions. 

It was too early in the worldwide crisis for that.

But gardening sounded appropriate.

So, garden planning began. 

Then, pulling out grandma's old recipe books to better incorporate farmers' market finds into some new meals.

Then...while out on a 'Mom is pulling weeds' excursion...I looked down to see in my side yard dirt a small, blackberry-type form, only slightly reddish and not quite as plump. I'd seen these little berries before covering the ground, but never knew where they'd come from. And since there were no more dandelions to speak of, I decided to finally figure out what was dropping these berries! Not to my left...not to my right...not from the hedge in front of me.....there were too many for squirrels to just be dropping them....

UP.

I looked up, and there, mixed into funny little finger shaped leaves and spindly branches were loads and loads of MULBERRIES. Of course, I didn't know yet that they were called mulberries, but that's what downloading a photo recognition software app and some google searches lead me to recognize. 

Then, the next google search input: Are Mulberries edible?

YES! 

And that's how I spent the next several weeks on my roof for half an hour a day picking mulberries from the large red mulberry tree, I never knew I had. 

But really, the great take away from that spur of the moment Mulberry identification was the thought that from that moment forward, I was going to approach my yard as if I were a tourist on a trip -- I'd be naturally curious about the flora, the fauna, the cuisine, the weather...basically I was going to pretend my backyard was a foreign vacation. And I soon realized, it kind of was! I knew NOTHING about what was happening in my yard. The birds, the squirrels...the foxes. 

Pause: let me reinforce for you the surprise of all this surrounding nature to me. I live IN the City of Dallas, Texas. I am 6 minutes from anything in downtown, thanks to freeways. I'm basically at a freeway entrance. There is a bamboo wall mitigating the sounds of the interstate from meeting my house windows. And even so: foxes, blue jays, cardinals and mulberries! Right here!

Soon, through a triangulation of photo recognition software, some highly recommended, amazon delivered, foraging books for dumb-dumbs, and my search browser readily at hand, I started composing a map of my yard to chart the various edible plants I was finding.

In just a couple of weeks, I had over 65 food plants identified and charted on my little backyard map...and only a handful were in my designated gardening planters.

OVER 65 EDIBLE PLANTS!

Now the test was...did I want to eat them?

I'll close this introduction here. 

The short answer is, yes; Yes, I did want to eat them. In fact, a little know-how and I found that they are delicious and nutritious. And fun to find. And fun to save. And fun to draw. And fun to make into baskets and ropes. And fun to turn into inks and dyes and paintings. 

And that is what I want to share with you in this blog:
the 'adventures', lessons and gifts of being a tourist in my (front and) backyard.

Here I will have stories, recipes and instructions. I'll also be sharing pictures and short videos on Instagram @curateyourweeds

Through my sharing, I hope to encourage and inspire you to take an adventure to your hyperlocal spaces and maybe find a few new healthy and sustainable foods convenient to your lifestyle.

That's all for this first entry! But I'll write soon!

Jenn