Wild Harvest Life - Winter Family in PNW

Prince’s pine (Chimaphila umbellata) growing naturally on the forest floor in Washington, where its pink flowers stood out among the moss and evergreen foliage. I went into the forest that day looking for something completely different. Mushrooms. Before mushroom season really begins, I like to scout different areas and pay attention to what is happening in the forest—what kinds of trees are growing there, how much moisture remains in the ground, what plants cover the forest floor, and whether the habitat looks promising for mushrooms later in the season. That was exactly what I was doing when something small and pink suddenly caught my attention. Among all the greens and browns of the forest floor, these tiny flowers stood out immediately. I stopped walking. The flowers were not large at all, but they were surprisingly noticeable. Their soft pink color looked almost luminous against the darker forest floor. I took out my camera and began filming them, but even while I was recording I ...

For several years, I did not really maintain my vegetable garden. I still grew a few familiar Korean vegetables and herbs in containers on the porch—perilla, lettuce, minari, dolnamul, and tomatoes—but I mostly left the garden itself alone. Before long, volunteer plants began filling the open ground. Some people might look at them and see only weeds. I do not really think of them that way. Curly dock and broadleaf dock appeared, along with oxeye daisy, plantain, two kinds of thistle, common vetch, bird’s-foot trefoil, self-heal, and many other plants that had found their own places in my forgotten garden. Then one especially large plant caught my attention. A Common Mullein plant in my Washington garden as its central flower stalk begins to develop. Its broad gray-green leaves were covered in such dense, soft hairs that they looked almost like velvet. The leaves spread outward around the base, but the center of the plant was beginning to change. A tightly folded structure was ri...