There just seem to be too many Fridays in my life.

At this point I ought to add that I don’t want to relinquish any of my remaining days, just that it would be nice to slow things down a little.

That’s why I’m spending some of my precious time writing plans. Things tend to get done when you write them down, whilst things in your head tend to slip by. Things like the Wild Food page, which has been dismally neglected of late.

I’ve now started a catalogue of plants to be foraged, as I want to eat more wild food next year and run more sessions about foraging. The result is that I find I know about a lot more plants than the ones I normally talk about, but I’ve also discovered a new plant in the garden. What I had thought was just another colour of dead nettle is in fact ground ivy. I’m pretty sure, looking at the pictures, that we also have henbit around the place. I really need to pay more attention.

Ground Ivy

In this case it doesn’t make much difference, they are just three more sets of small salad leaves with a few medicinal uses, though if you ate a lot of ground ivy it may prove toxic. Like so many things “a lot” is probably more than you’re likely to eat, like the toxic dose of chickweed, which I’ve seen listed as “several kilos”. I would have trouble eating several kilos of anything, even bananas, so I should imagine that if you manage to eat that amount of garden weeds you have more problems than poisoning.

I’ve also found some more wood sorrel. I think it’s the purple variety of creeping wood sorrel – Oxalis corniculata var. atropurpurea – as we foragers say. I tried some that was growing in a pot in the polytunnel earlier in the year and it is remarkably clean and lemony in taste. If only all foraged leaves were as nice.

Creeping wood sorrel – purple variety

After two days of making sure I work on my foraging knowledge for a couple of hours a day I already feel like I’ve accomplished as much in two days as I did in the preceding two weeks.

I’m going to be making a list of recipes to try too, so the Recipe page should start being more active too.

And before anyone says it, yes “typical man” and his lists.