After doing some grocery shopping yesterday, John and I went for a drive. We wanted to see the Arrowleaf Balsamroot in bloom. It's one of our favourite Okanagan flowers. Now, before anyone says anything, I realize it's not just an Okanagan flower; thing is, I'd never seen them before we moved here.
They are, in fact, indigenous to the western part of the continent and were widely used by the aboriginal peoples for food and medicine. And they're beautiful. We saw one property that was almost completely yellow with these cheerful plants.
If you look carefully at the picture below, just above the flowers, you can see something that John was surprised to find... wild asparagus! There wasn't a lot, but we each had a couple of stalks of freshly picked wild asparagus. How does it compare? Well, the stalks were lovely, with a slightly stronger flavour than cultivated asparagus; the heads I found to be a little bitter. That could be because they were already beginning to open up. Nonetheless, it's the first time I've eaten wild asparagus.
The second picture was 180 degrees from where John was picking the asparagus. This is a view of the lake, looking toward the city of Kelowna. If you look carefully, you may be able to see the new bridge (look towards the left side). Kelowna is on the right hand side of the picture.Incidentally, the picture in the header of the blog shows the old bridge and the new bridge, side by side. The old bridge, in the foreground, is no longer there from what I understand. (We don't get out that way much).
Knitting... oh yeah, I've been doing some of that, too. Mainly, I've been working on the baby dress. It's coming along nicely, a little further along than the picture in my previous post shows.
The front is now at about 4" and the back at about 3"; it's my tv knitting, or when I don't feel like concentrating on what I'm doing. I'm not rushing this little dress; the baby's not due until August.
The periwinkle Aeolian is coming along nicely. I've just started the Final Agave chart. Again, I'm not rushing this one; I have one done and the second one is just for fun (like most of my knitting, really). It doesn't photograph well at this stage, so I won't show it to you until it is off the needles.
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The flowers are really lovely. I can easily understand why you would take a drive just to see them.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen wild asparagus, but I'm sure it must be tasty. I've always wanted to grow some, but Lew didn't want to (as he put it) waste the garden plot for something that would take a few years before you could harvest. He couldn't seem to grasp that once established it would be there every year and he would have nothing left to do. Oh well, water under the damn. I'm glad you enjoyed your wild asparagus.