In The Morning Paper - Weeds

They could find a carousel to ride or kiss in every cave. They could contemplate the entire universe or rhetorically, "What is a Weed?"

What would The New Yorker article "What is a Weed?" really be about? I let it be a surprise for Saturday morning.

Oh, Wildman Steve Brill, famous for foraging the parks of New York and living to tell about it! Many of us have, but only one or two per make it into the press.

There is also a book review planted in it: "Lives of Weeds: Opportunism, Resistance, Folly, by John Cardina.

The featured video (in my view) is a plant lady I went to school with.

Oh what fun!

You might also like to read: "What is a Weed?".

Really nice work Rivka Galchen!

Well, my guest is waking up in the other room, so it's time to check on the dandelion root percolation and plan the best route from the farmers market, to The Botanic Garden, to old growth, to possibly a little ginseng plot I planted twenty years ago. I really hope no one thinks we are there to poach!

We are waking up in Ithaca, NY. There is no scarcity of foragers in any place.

Seeing this plant-positive piece communicated well in The New Yorker was a thrill. Truly nice work. Often popular coverage of anything foraging is, as the kids say, cringe. But this piece does not crinkle my cress!

-Heather Irvine (Sprig!)