Making friends with plants

Comfrey and chamomile.

Plant care has not always been my strength. I’ve had so many plants die from too much water, too little water, too much sun, too little sun, haunted soil -- who knows. But sometime in the past several years, I’ve slowly learned how to read plants’ cues. 

We are lucky to have a backyard, especially in a pandemic when it’s not as safe or easy to get outdoors into nature. But for a long time, our yard was next-door to a eucalyptus tree, which constantly blew a thick carpet of its leaves onto our soil, which discouraged anything else from growing. But a couple of years ago our neighbor cut down the eucalyptus, which opened up a lot of possibilities for gardening. 

Since then I’ve planted a variety of flora, some that are native to the Bay Area and California, and some that just do well here. We’ve got succulents and nightshades, chartreuse coleus and deep green impatiens with cheerful pink blossoms. But we’ve had a lot of trouble growing edible plants. Only cold-weather crops like kale and Brussels sprouts grow well in our cool and foggy city, and they often wind up so coated in aphids that they’re inedible. 

Herbs, on the other hand, seem to do okay. I’ve planted oregano and chives, mugwort and rosemary, yarrow and lavender that don’t mind the chill, and don’t attract every insect within a two-mile radius. 

This year I wanted to expand the number of herbs in my garden, and I began to wonder what the Ohlone Indians might have planted or foraged. At the same time, I didn’t want to steal information from a culture that isn’t my own. My own ancestors displaced indigenous tribes in other parts of the country, and even if they hadn’t, I have no business adopting their customs as my own. That said, the plants that grow well in the Bay Area have done so for a long time, and connecting with the land where I live means connecting with the plants of the region. 

The bulk of my ancestors came from Britain, Ireland, Scotland and northern Europe (Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia), so I started digging around for the earliest information I could find on the use of native plants in the UK and Ireland. Before the age of modern medicine, it’s likely they would have used these plants as medicine, and learned about them from their own ancestors. And some of them were likely to grow happily here in San Francisco, too. 

I found a couple of good resources in particular. One was the Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm, a chant that mentions nine plants, the healing they provide, and how to combine them together to make a medicinal salve. The poem mentions mugwort, plantain, shepherd’s purse, nettle, betony, chamomile, crab apple, chervil and fennel. It is included in a text commonly called the Lacnunga, a collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers, written mainly in Old English and Latin. It dates back to the 10th or 11th century, though some parts of it are much older. 

Another good resource is this post, from the Herbal Academy, about the gardens at Glastonbury Abbey. They include 11 plants that have been part of ancient British culture for centuries, including some brought over by the Romans, Saxons and Vikings. Among them are lady’s bedstraw, lemon balm, yarrow, meadowsweet, lovage, vervain (verbena), comfrey, elecampane, betony and woad. 

I knew a number of these plants would thrive in San Francisco, so I decided to add a few, including mugwort, comfrey, chamomile, lemon balm and vervain. Nettle already grows wild in the garden after the rainy season, and fennel grows like a weed in several spots in our neighborhood. Planting, growing, tending and making use of them makes me feel more connected -- to the ground under my feet, to the land where I live, and to my ancestors, who probably used these herbs as food and medicine. I love the idea that one of them could walk into my garden and recognize what’s growing there, know how to work with each leaf and bud.

An Unexpected Mouse

Sometimes, you find yourself trying to save the life of a creature that, in other circumstances, you’d kill without a second thought. 

On a recent morning, I went outside to fill the bird feeders when I noticed a small gray mouse on the patio steps. As I stood nearby, it first looked up at me, trembling. Its forehead bore a bloody, diagonal gash. A moment later, it turned away from me and huddled into itself, trying to hide. 

I immediately developed a couple of theories about how the mouse had come to be in its current state. Either one of the neighbors’ cats had attacked it but given up, or one of the local predatory birds -- we have ravens, crows, scrub jays and a red-shouldered hawk -- caught it but dropped it from the trees overhead. 

I know the second option sounds less likely, but one afternoon my partner and I were standing and talking in the yard when suddenly a rat fell out of the sky and thudded to the ground near our feet. When we looked up, we saw three crows on a branch overhead, looking sheepish. On another occasion, an injured rat I found in the same location as this mouse was later attacked and killed by a passing scrub jay. 

At any rate, I left the mouse alone, hoping that whoever had hurt it would come back to finish the job. A little while later, though, it hopped down from the steps and attempted to run across the patio. It turned out to have an injured leg, which caused it to careen around in circles. Eventually the mouse wore itself out and spent several hours huddled in the shade on the patio. 

After it regained some of its strength, the mouse made its way down most of the steps between our patio and garage. As night fell, my partner scooped the mouse into a box with some soft cloth (a company-logo ShamWow, plus a bit of insulation from where he suspected the mouse had probably been living in our garage). 

We’ve had mice and rats in our house before -- typically brought in by our cat, who isn’t a very good hunter to begin with and routinely forgets that, as a predator, she’s supposed to kill and eat her prey. If we can shoo them safely back outside we do, but we’ve also killed a few in snap traps baited with peanut butter. We’ve tried live-trapping them, but our local rodents are too smart to be tempted into them. I know: they’re invasive and carry parasites and diseases. But they’re also living creatures, and as long as they stay outdoors, I’d rather they be healthy and happy. 

When I checked the box the next morning, I was surprised to find that the mouse was still alive, and much calmer. I hadn’t expected it to survive the night. As I looked down at the tiny creature, watching its alert whiskers twitch, I began to wonder if any wildlife rescue organizations would be able to help it. 

I poked around online, and finally landed on the wildlife rescue branch of the Peninsula Humane Society. The woman I spoke with asked about the mouse’s injuries. She didn’t sound hopeful when I told her the extent of them, but she said I could bring the mouse to their facility and they’d do what they could. However, most invasive rodents -- this mouse almost definitely qualified -- would likely be euthanized, she said. 

My heart ached with that news, but I knew the mouse was suffering, and neither my partner nor I felt skilled enough to dispatch it ourselves. 

At the door of PHS, I handed the woman in blue scrubs the box, and she asked me to fill out a form on a clipboard. “You can call us later, if you’d like to know what happens to this poor little guy,” she said. 

I didn’t call. I had a good idea of what would happen, but I just didn’t want it to be real. 

Like Herb Caen, But Birds

A few days ago, I glanced into my backyard garden and saw a large, dark shape under the bird feeders. At first I thought maybe it was one of the neighborhood skunks, but quickly realized it was one of the neighborhood ravens instead.

Normally I see them hanging out on the utility wires in front of our house, or in various trees throughout the area, including the large Monterey cypress in our neighbors’ backyard. Sometimes I will put peanuts out on the stoop for them and watch as they greedily fly off with a nut in their beak, cawing to let their clan know there are peanuts available. I hear them chatting in the treetops, and their wingbeats as they fly by, but I’ve never seen one land in our yard before.

But there it was, casually eating birdseed from a bowl we’ve left on the ground for squirrels and doves (squirrels have destroyed four of our bird feeders in the past several months; don’t @ me). Despite how massive the raven was compared to the doves, let alone any of the other birds, it didn’t try to scare or intimidate any of them. We have pigeons who charge at other birds, finches who fight for the best feeder perch, and scrub jays who scream at everybody. But this raven was calm, enjoying a snack and a drink of water before it flew off to wherever it calls home.

I read somewhere a few years back that the screechy warning sounds made by scrub jays, squirrels and some other birds are a semi-common language of distress calls. Unfortunately, I can’t find it now, but it’s true that birds have networks to warn one another of predators (including us humans). We hear these pretty often in our neighborhood, whether it’s a warning about humans, a backyard cat, a tussle between jays and squirrels, or the occasional Cooper’s hawk that hangs out in the cypress tree or other spots nearby. Bird and mammal languages are often so species-specific, so it’s pretty cool that they have ways of communicating across those differences.

Speaking of hawks, I occasionally find a “pellet” cast off by one of the hawks, which they drop down from the cypress into our backyard. These pellets are mostly composed of fur, feathers and a collection of small bones (my kid loves to dissect them). We don’t mind having the hawks around, partly because they keep the rodent population in check. Our cat is a hopeless hunter. She’s black and white, so she can’t really hide. She’s too slow. And, while she does catch the occasional mouse or juvenile rat, she lacks any killing instinct and is prone to bringing rodents inside and losing them under the stove.

A couple of weeks ago she caught a slow-moving, ill-seeming young rat that was eating some of the scattered birdseed in our yard. Our cat caught and played with it, but I kept her from bringing it inside. Once the rat got away from her, I brought her in and made sure she couldn’t get back out. But the rat ill-advisedly ventured forth and was discovered by a passing scrub jay, which attacked and killed it — but didn’t eat it, either. We’re glad the city takes meat in its compost collection.

I’ve saved the most adorable tidbit for last: I love watching birds feed each other. Once in a while, we’ll see a chickadee, junco or some other bird fly to the feeders, pick up a bit of food, and take it to another bird of the same species waiting nearby. It’s called “allofeeding,” and it’s sometimes done by adults feeding their juveniles, and sometimes it’s courtship behavior. Either way, it’s incredibly cute. The black-capped chickadees have a unique song associated with allofeeding, and I get excited every time I hear it.