Sedentary Travelogue #11: Eating the Samples...

Early yesterday morning I took a walk out to two of the fields I've planted with native prairie grasses to see how they were doing. In one, I found this lovely little grass with seed heads full of compact red seeds. I've seen it around before but didn't know what it was. It's definitely not one of the prairie grasses I planted, but it might be native anyway. So, I plucked a bit of it to take home and look up.

Ever since I was a child, I've enjoyed pulling up grass stalks and nibbling on the tender ends. Grazing animals have a yummier diet than most people think. Some grasses taste especially fine -- and I know them by sight, but they don't always match up with the various grasses that I can name by site. Surrounded by such a rich wealth of grasses here in Missouri, both native and alien (or should I call it European ethnic if I'm eating it?) I'm in the habit of sampling different varieties often.

Apparently, this habit has become more instinctual than I realized. As I walked up the road from the prairie plots, I absent-mindedly "husked" the leaves from the grasses and started nibbling away at the bottom. By the time I got to the top of the hill, all I had left was the seed head. This was not enough to definitively identify the plant. I felt like a joke among naturalists! Good scientific method certainly doesn't include eating the samples!

I feel like this is what I've done with these Travelogues too. I've only written one in the past year and most of that was written by a friend. I'm going to try to pick up the pace quite a bit more in the coming months. There is much to report on as to my life in the past year. I'm very aware of how the little snippets of travelogues I've written so far are woefully inadequate to capture so much of my life here. I'll try to rectify that a bit, but in the past year I have simply been too busy nibbling on the life in front of me to succesfully record it.

By the way, I think the grass was Switch Grass, which is native (hurray!) and it had a lovely, slightly nutty flavor.

More soon,
Jacob