Foraging: Eating What Grows (and When What Grows is Invasive)

I first found a patch of stinging nettle the way most with an untrained eye do — by getting stung, betrayed by the gap at my wrist between my work gloves and long-sleeve shirt while clearing a patch of invasive holly. It wouldn’t have occurred to me at all that I could (or should, or would) eat the nettles if we hadn’t sat around a fire pit with a friend only a few weeks before, and been served nettle tea from a jar he’d foraged and hung to dry. I was becoming familiar with gardens, with farmers markets, with the idea that food could come from closer…