HOW TO EAT A PEAR
Don’t Pick When Ripe!
Bite into a tree-ripened pear. Yecchh! It’s brown and mushy on the inside.
Pear is one of the few fruits that tastes best picked underripe, then ripened indoors — and there is as much art to picking and ripening a pear as to growing it. Perhaps more, because pears are relatively easy to grow as compared with other tree fruits.
Although the fruit has to be picked before it is ripe, you can’t pick just any unripe pear and then expect it to ripen into a juicy, sweet, buttery fruit, with the subtle flavor individual to the particular variety. The spicy flavor of Seckel or the hint of vanilla of Concorde pears, for example.
Passe Crasanne pear, ripe and ready for eating
To ripen well, a pear must have attained a certain degree of maturity before harvest. Otherwise, it merely Read more
MOLES, THE FURRY KIND
A Nice, Springy Lawn
One year my lawn felt particularly soft and springy. It felt pleasant at first, then that feeling gave way to panic once I looked down and saw tunnels pushing up just beneath the surface. A mole invasion!
Before contemplating turning a herd of these velvety, furred creatures into a mole fur garment, I consider why they were there and just what they were doing.
First of all, the “they” probably was an “it.” Moles are very territorial animals, so even if a lawn or garden is riddled with tunnels, it may be the work of just a single interloper.
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A MAYAPPLE IN SEPTEMBER
An Eerie Plant
September does not seem a likely time for seeking out things called “mayapples,” but this when they are ripe. Obviously, mayapple is no ordinary apple. In fact, it’s not an apple at all. But you can eat it, I guess.
Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) is a native plant that blankets forest floors throughout eastern North America. Each spring, as soon as winter chill is out of the air, the perennial rootstocks send up new stalks. Each stalk grows about 18 inches high, then is capped by just one or two leaves. The leaves are like large shields, deeply lobed and held parallel to the ground.
The perennial rootstock spreads underground, so plants grow in ever expanding colonies. These colonies add another layer to the forest, one of green shields hovering above the earthen floor. Contrasting growth habits and leaf shapes make mayapple a nice companion to ferns in a woodland garden. Contain the wandering roots — in a bottomless pot, for example — if your woodland garden is small. Read more
