It is said that when the pods are young and tender, they can be sauteed in butter about 10 to 15 minutes for a tasty side dish.
![[Texas Redbud beans]](pic/rbudbean.gif)
WILD FLOWERS OF EAST TEXASPage 5A small collection of plants found by Leona Halley Henderson |
| 3 Mar 2000 scanned this twig of the Red bud in our front circle. Red Buds are of the Legume family, and the beans ripen each fall and winter and are usually quite prolific.
It has started blooming, but I can't reach the blooms without a ladder. These are hanging down low enough for me to grab. will get some bloom later. They look kind of like other blooms of the Legumes; similar to little sweet pea blooms. It is said that when the pods are young and tender, they can be sauteed in butter about 10 to 15 minutes for a tasty side dish. |
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![[Texas Redbud blooms]](pic/rbudblum.gif) |
4 Mar 2000 Ivan reached up and got this bit of bloom for me as the tree was too tall for me to get to the blooms. It is in my front yard and a blessing each year. Back in about 1983 or so, my daughters, Linda, Sandra along with me and Ivan visited a friends property to find a Redbud. Linda dug up a 2 foot whip of a tree, bought it home, stuck it in the ground in the front circle at our home and it didn't even wilt. It has been a joy each spring after the first 3 or 4 years of growth. If you want to scan some of your own, see the directions on the Wild Plum article below. The blooms can be used in salads, pickled, or cooked as a vegetable. I have heard that all my life, but have never tried it. I may just try them this year if I can get Ivan to get me a few more! ......later...didn't get to try them. |
| Today is 3 March 2000 and the wild plums have been blooming for a couple of weeks and I nearly missed getting a scan of the blooms. As you can see, on this specimen, many of the petals have fallen off. The tree looks so light and airy with its open branches intertwined with the other surrounding trees, almost like a thin bright ethereal cloud in the woods. Maybe like a sprinkle of fairy dust!.
Since this little branch tip is, of course, three dimensional, I had to place some supporting books on either side of the subject on the scanner bed and used a crochet hook to bridge and hold the subject up off the glass so it wouldn't look squashed. Instead of placing the scanner lid over it, I placed several pages of printer paper over it. The background seems to pick up color from the subject so the colors seem to harmonize. I use the JPG format to do the enhancements, but since they look too grainy in that format, I save them to the gif with fewer colors to keep it from being grainy. |
| 3 Mar 2000 was trying to find some Red Bud blossoms I could reach and couldn't reach the ones in my yard, so noticed some red blooms in the neighbor's yard so went to check it out. They weren't Red Buds, but they were so lovely, I couldn't resist scanning to share with you.
My neighbor, Mary, is a week-ender, so will have to check with her later I suppose it is a cultivar, but, like I said, I couldn't resist it. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have. I also wish everyone had a viewing screen like the one on this lap-top. It allows me to make the screen more light or more dark, so it can really enhance a graphic one way or the other. 3 April 2000...Yep...they are miniature peach tree blossoms!
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![[peach blooms]](pic/marysyd.gif) |
![[lambsquarter]](pic/lambsqt.gif)
Today, 2 Mar 2000, I scanned some Lamb's-quarter, also known as Pig-weed. The colors wouldn't come out as well as I wanted; the leaves are more of a deep soft green, with a light dusting of powdery white near the axils and under side of leaf. The leaves are a wee bit succulent. They are rather a pretty little plant until they mature and then are usually a bit gangly.
I use the leaves to add to spinach or mixed greens and would use just them, but there aren't enough of the plants in my area to do that as it takes a lot and I wont take more than a third off of a plant. As you know, you can have a gunny sack of greens and still get only a skillet full after they are cooked! There is a lot of food value in the greens and as I understand it, are helpful to ward off anemia. Don't know if this has been proven. Ivan says that the doctor's guide to a good heart diet is if it tastes good, spit it out. I don't think this applies to Lamb's-quarter, as it has a good flavor if cooked like spinach and is good for you, too! In the fall, the seeds can be harvested and ground into flour. I frequently add bits of other flour grains to my bread flour, such as rye, oats, soy, rice and taboli. Don't add too much, though or it won't raise properly. I also add some glucose to the bread flour to offset the weight of these other flours.
Took a scan of the plant from the side, too,hoping it will help identify it. I am very partial to this plant. My mother used to take me with her to "greens hunt." We would put on loose clothing, carry several brown paper bags saved from the grocery store, maybe take a bit of lunch, and take off to the meadows and woods. She would show me the various plants and their names and whether they were edible. We would spend the morning wandering and gathering. Go home and perhaps have a "wilted salad" using some of the greens like dandelion and water cress and cook the rest with salt and a bit of bacon grease. We weren't very knowledgeable of cholesterol back then. : } There was a wonderful waterfall from a spring coming out of a bank of rock and forming a large pool and a creek. The pool seemed to always have,in the spring and summer, fresh crispy cress. |
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![[lambs-quarter]](pic/lambqtr1.gif)