Marsh Marigolds

Feeling free,

we set aside our sweaters and ran into the warm air.  I could taste the budding flowers, smell the sunshine from the heart of my lungs.  The ride to the park was short, but there were cars in the parking lot, meaning that this would be an extra-undercover operation.  Harvesting non-invasive wild plants is illegal in state parks, so we had to pretend we were merely appreciating the beauty of the Marsh Marigolds as we peered over the dock at them.
This

is what Marsh Marigolds look like in the early spring, before they bloom.  See those little buds?  That's where the flowers will come out, but the leaves are what is most commonly eaten, often boiled like spinach.


This is what we were up against, a foreign beauty with an acidic taste.  My partner took a leaf right off the stem and ate it raw, something the guidebook warns explicitly against.  Marsh marigolds are mildly toxic until cooked.  His face went sour and he spit the green into the swampy ground.  He later told me he felt "a little funny" several minutes after eating it, and that perhaps he'd gotten slightly high.  I giggled.


Here we were.  We didn't have much time, so we made a quick trip off the beaten trail to explore some downed wood piles: prime mushroom harvesting ground.  The forest was sparse; the deer had probably gotten to most of it before we had.  However, a few oysters 
and puffballs remained from the previous year.  The mushrooms ready for us, but we had a fanny pack full of marsh marigolds to sample when we got home.