It is summer time and as I walk around I find ripe berries everywhere. I remember as a kid picking mulberries and eating them while outside playing. I remember in fact eating many things I found in the woods, its amazing I didn't get sick. Anyway, I have been tempted through my walks to start picking some of this great looking fruit and snacking as I walked. I didn't however, mainly because the berries were scattered all over the ground and in the gutters. So my mind thought right away that there must be something "wrong" with them if no one else was eating them.
This brings me to the real topic of this post. The Photo-Monk has been exposed to some real poverty, not only in this country but I have also met many people from other countries were starvation is part of their everyday existence. The thought of berries falling and rotting on the ground would be very strange to them. The idea that I just past all this free fruit by would also not make any sense to them. I thought about this quite a bit this week. I then started to notice all the things I passed just walking around the city. I passed strawberries, blackberries, mulberries, something that may have been cranberries. There could have been some good prickly pears out there and so on.
Out of this I decided a couple of things. We are certainly spoiled here and I need to get an edible plant guide so I don't have to pass up such a beautiful banquet of fruit because of my ignorance. For the other thing that I realized is as a child I knew what everything was, growing up in rural Indiana. As an adult if its not clearly marked on the package, I'm not sure what I"m eating.
So next time you have a picnic, try serving a wild berry salad, how cool would that be?
Caleb Storms
Then Photo-Monk
No comments:
Post a Comment