#pine woods

Pine Woods at Viareggio

Artist: John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (English, 1829-1908)

Date: 19th century

Medium: Oil on canvas

After getting a bigger than expected harvest of beautyberries at Mom’s, I decided to trek into our woods and check our berries.

A section pretty close to the house is heavily populated with both beautyberry and trifoliate orange (flying dragon orange 🐉 🍊!!).

The fruit of one of the orange shrubs was turning yellow, but most were still green and the yellow were still hard as a rock when squeezed. I will definitely have enough to make the jelly I was hoping for when they ripen. Probably not a large batch once I get all the peel off, but enough to make it worthwhile.

If I had ever found much of a use for burnweed there would have been tons of it to forage. Since, I hadn’t foraged it (other than a little for a tasty fruit salad featuring pineapple), it had all grown quite tall, one was even over my head. I also, found some large shiso plants, since I had only foraged them here once on my last venture into the woods on Svátek Nejsvětějši trojice/the Feast of the Holy Trinity (first Sunday after Pentecost, June 15th this year). I mostly left it alone, but took a few of the largest leaves I had seen yet for some wraps I’ve been wanting to try.

Though the day had started out drizzly and gray, by late afternoon when I headed out it was sunny and the beautyberries were easily spotted through the overgrowth as they positively shone in the sun. I ended up with 3 Lbs and the branches hadn’t even fully ripened yet. I imagine I’ll be making more jelly and syrup as well as the wine I want to try.

Moonrise    -   Harald Oskar Sohlberg , 1919.

Norwegian  1869-1935