On the forested property where hubby and I live there is a wide variety of shrubby groundcover and undergrowth: sword ferns, deer ferns, bracken ferns, Oregon grape, salal …
… salmonberry bushes (which I call “nasty prickle bushes” … and I’m in an ongoing effort to remove), and of course the scourge of relentless, ever-encroaching blackberry vines!
When hubby and I were in the process of purchasing the property, we had the opportunity to meet the former owners of the home (a wonderful couple!). From chatting with them, I learned that both salal and Oregon grape were once a food source for the original Native Americans. Who knew! (whenever I see purple berries on a wild plant I always immediately assume them to be poisonous)
So, from the get-go of living on the forested property, I have had a high esteem for both the salal and the Oregon grape. I sampled the berries when they ripened that first summer. I gathered salal berries and baked them into muffins. I made salal-leaf tea.
After the first summer, the novelty wore off and I quit sampling them. But I still held them in high esteem. This forested piece of property was their home … these plants grew here before I ever showed up. They are more than welcome to grow here and fill the forest.
But the blackberry vines … and the salmonberry bushes … those plants I have viewed with disdain. Nothing but briars and prickles! Nothing good there. Those plants are not welcome in this forest! I’ve been involved in an ongoing battle to pull them up! (without much success … because they are just that relentless!)
And the bracken ferns … another plant of disdain. Bracken ferns grow on tall upright stems and look much like something which might be waved back and forth in front of an ancient pharaoh of Egypt. You can see bracken ferns in our background photo for today.
These have been an object of contempt especially in the garden corner … springing up from the ground everywhere! Growing tall and creating dense thickets of bushy weed-growth! And spreading through an underground root system which is practically impossible to dig up.
It is easy to disdain something of which you know nothing about. What if I had not learned about the salal and Oregon grape from the former owners of the property? I very well might have disdained those plants too. And busied myself about the task of trying to pull them up as well.
This past month I have been reading a book entitled: “Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest.” This book describes how the Native Americans used fire as a land-management tool to promote growth of food crops. Much to my surprise I discovered that the primary plants which were managed by fire for food production were … blackberries, salal, Oregon grape, salmonberry, and bracken fern! (as well as kamas and huckleberry)
I had no idea these disdained plants were so highly valued!
First-hand accounts by early explorers to the area describe the original inhabitants using the dried roots of the bracken fern as a source of flour, which they baked into a type of bread. Who knew!
I did a Google search and discovered that bracken ferns are still used as a food source to this day (just make sure to stick to new, leafless shoots). The mature bracken ferns are mildly poisonous, and people of the past soaked the ferns in water & ash to remover the poison before cooking. Bracken ferns are typically used in soups and stews, especially by cooks in Korea and Japan.
It is easy to disdain something of which you know nothing about.
How ironic it is that I have disdained the bracken ferns coming up like crazy in the garden corner … when I can’t even get vegetables to grow in the garden because the weather here is too cold and cloudy and rainy.
The bracken fern is native to this area. It is a food source especially designed to grow in cold, cloudy, rainy climates. Not tomatoes … nor cucumbers … nor melons.
How ironic is it that I have disdained the blackberries and salmonberries … when they are the native food source for this area. They are meant to grow in cold, cloudy, rainy climates.
I don’t have to worry about salal berries or Oregon grape being my food source, because I can get big bags of frozen blueberries and frozen mangoes from Costco. It is easy to disregard or even disdain things for which we have no need, and see no value in.
When it comes to life, there will be things in our life which we disdain … much like the bracken ferns and the prickly salmonberry bushes. Whatever those things are, we don’t like them in our life. We try to forget about them … we try to bury them. We see no value in them at all.
But those things are native to who we are. They are part of what makes us who we are … perhaps a life experience from our past which has shaped who we are … or perhaps our family background … etc. …
In order to have a well-balanced life we must come to grips with those parts of our life which we don’t like … those things which we tend to disdain.
Although I won’t be using the dried roots of the bracken fern to make flour which I use to bake bread, I now have an appreciation for the plant which I never had before. I now know that this plant was a blessing for those who once lived in this area hundreds of years before me.
The same thing is true when it comes to life.
Those things in our life which we disdain … which are “native” to the soil of our life … perhaps, if we are willing to learn from them, they might wind up giving us some knowledge and wisdom about our life which we never had before.
And perhaps those things might wind up having some value in helping us to become a better person going forward.
