Salal

A slow day, thank goodness. Did go for a row, and a walk. And then some time in the studio to try to clean it up from the mess of the last few days, to the tunes of Mozart’s The Magic Flute on the Saturday Opera. Well, it looks worse now as I decided I needed to organize the big file drawers so now there are papers piled all over. Some artworks of mine and kids I had forgotten made me smile. I can finish it tomorrow....

Thank heaven for salal! (Gaultheria Shallon) It is so happy everywhere here in dry or wet, as a sea of green underbrush. Some of it is taller than I am. We have to keep maintaining our trails or they would be full of salal. The whitish flowers yield purple “berries” (actually fleshy sepals.) These were an important fruit for the first nations peoples- they ate them fresh and dried in cakes, or dipped in oolichan grease, to sweeten or thicken other foods. More recently they have been prepared in jams or jellies. (not by me. I should try that sometime :-) ) The young leaves were used as a hunger suppressant and the branches used in pit cooking or as flavoring in fish soup. Salal was a favorite of David Douglas who brought it to England in 1828 for use as a garden ornamental. It’s been gathered here for sale to florists (my daughter in law says we should do that!) But they have to be perfect specimens and ours always have a flaw, I was noticing....and someone’s been nibbling on these ripe berries.....