Comments | syntonic_comma: bike rides

syntonic_comma

bike rides

Jun 03, 2020 03:52

Wed Jun 3 03:52:54 EDT 2020

Tonight I rode out to Herndon. I wasn't sure how far I was going to go when I set out, but I'd finally had a good night's morning's sleep (past noon). At Hunter Mill Rd (12mi/19km) I knew Old Reston Ave (15mi/24km) was easy. When I got to Sunset Hills Rd, I decided to take it instead of the trail. The pavement is better ( Read more... )

exercise, biking, health, wildlife, weather, pandemics, police, work, fog

Comments 5

aome June 9 2020, 03:03:24 UTC

I've been thinking of you, wondering how you feel about the whole "Black Lives Matter" protests, gestures of solidarity, etc. I've never heard you complain about being treated badly because of the color of your skin but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. What do you hope comes out of this, ideally?

I feel like if I jump on the protest/support bandwagon, I'm going to be seen as just another white-looking person standing up NOW, sure, but what about next month, next year, when the furor has died down? The thing is, I've never been a person to go to protests, wear political shirts, etc. Yet I feel like a jackass if I *don't* speak up somehow. Or if I speak up, I'll just put my foot in it somehow and be accused of microaggressions or ... I don't know.

But I've been thinking of you, wondering what your perspective is on all this.

And whether or not you ever figured out what "chufa grass" is. :-P

chufa syntonic_comma June 10 2020, 06:13:26 UTC

My thoughts on BLM are worth taking some time to organize.

LJ's being erratic about cross-posting again, and it didn't get the last DW update to this posting.

I found plenty about chufa grass when I simply turned to a search engine.
Wild Foods Home Garden: Chufa
National Wild Turkey Federation: Chufa how-to (in case you want to grow a crop to attract wild turkeys)
Wikipedia Cyperus esculentus

Now that I know what it looks like, I've been mowing it for years. Sometimes leaving it because there wasn't much and it's interesting. Or chopping it because it looked weedy. There had never been any suggestion before that it was something special. I don't know how it came to be there. It has a good chance of recovering, now that I'm aware of it. I regret discouraging something that might be edible (but I don't accept Annie's outrage about plants she never mentioned).

(Hmmm, LJ is posting even though I click Preview. ☹)
(Now the choices are Edit Comment and Preview - no Post?)

Re: chufa aome June 10 2020, 23:17:42 UTC

Huh. That looks a lot like a grass I'm constantly pulling out of my veggie garden, and which grows in the edge of the rock garden up against the house in the back yard. But I've never seen the nut underneath. It's just ... that blade-y grass type looks a lot the same.

Re: chufa syntonic_comma June 11 2020, 05:23:27 UTC

I think you have to dig a little - "2.5-5 cm (1-2 inches)" - to see the nuts.Pulling up the plant ... leaves the nuts in the ground.
Even tiny ones will turn into plants in the spring.
The leaf arrangement apparently confirms the id:There are the leaves from the base, a tall stalk, ... as little as 8 inches to over 20 inches, and then another set of leaves coming out from a single point on the upper part of the stalk where the flowers appear above. It is not a grass, but a Sedge.
I'm very curious to find out what this tastes like, so I hope ours recover.

I suppose you can now consider it a vegetable, and let it grow.

Thread 5