It's not a weed; it's a wildflower

I walked around the corner of my shed the other day and came face to face with these earth-fallen bits of blue sky:



Chicory (Cichorium intybus), sometimes called cornflower, is one tough wildflower, growing in dry, inhospitable places like road shoulders and the gravel base of my shed.

Endive and chicory root come from cultivated varieties of Cichorium, although you can also use the wild plant. It's been used as a coffee substitute or additive for generations, and as a vegetable for thousands of years. Horace (b. 65 BCE) mentioned it, along with olives and mallow, as part of his diet.

And while the sky-blue flowers are the ones that catch my eye, I've occasionally seen it with white flowers.

On a completely different note, but still garden-related:

While our growing season is limited here in the Northeast (read: New England), we enjoy beans, peas, carrots, sweet corn, zucchini and other squash, peppers hot and mild, melons, tomatoes, tomatillos, leafy greens, brussels sprouts and probably a score or more of other fresh vegetables. And a lot of us put up some of the harvest in jars or in the freezer.

Even if we don't have gardens, we have supermarkets where we can buy fresh produce year-round. But it's a pretty good bet you have a few cans of peas, corn and/or beans in your pantry.

In England, refrigerators tend to be under-the-counter appliances, and people make more frequent trips to the market for smaller quantities of fresh foods.

But is Old England really this devoted to fresh veg? From an article on independent.co.uk:

"No rational person would buy [canned vegetables] to eat, but sales soar around harvest festival time when millions of churchgoers and schoolchildren have to give a basket of non-perishable foodstuffs for distribution to the elderly. What the elderly do with them is a mystery."

I don't know about you, but I grew up on canned green beans, and for years I wouldn't touch those suspiciously crisp sticks Dad brought in from the garden. Now I like both fresh and canned, for their own particular attributes.

Like the way canned green beans squeak when you bite into them.

I LOVE that little squeak.