Flora
Bountiful Baltimore
If you’ve ever plucked a mulberry from a city tree, you are officially a forager. Humans have eaten wild plants and fungi for hundreds of millennia, while we’ve farmed for only about 13,000 years.
Any number of culturally important ingredients—such as mugwort among Korean-Americans, or a salty, tangy “weed” known as purslane, or, in Spanish, as verdolagas—may be easier to find in nature than in the supermarket.
Death of a Fig Tree: My Climate Change
This winter in Baltimore we suffered. We steeled ourselves against record-breaking cold, and our heating bills were scandalous. There was so much snow that the children got tired of sledding. (It snowed on Tax Day, for Pete’s sake.) Months later, the potholes are punishing, and my fig tree is at death’s door.
Canna Biz
Imagine: A year from now your daughter gets a concussion playing basketball. Her doctor recommends treatment with medical cannabis, which you get filled at a clean, well-lighted dispensary with a friendly pharmacist and a 21st century security system. The medicine—a standardized dose—comes in a pill bottle with a childproof cap.