Growing up in Pennsylvania’s wooded suburbia, I must have walked on it and passed by it more than I could know. But I never had to duck under the playful berried branches of pokeweek until we owned our own home… and started a restaurant.
We had only lived in New Wilmington for two years before we took the plunge of our lives and bought the historic but run-down and ‘permanently closed’ Tavern on the Square. Opened in 1931, the restaurant had been an icon and it needed everything to bring it back to life.
That’s when the pokeweed took over. Our first summer of construction on the restaurant started with the normal springtime sprouts of dandelion and other little weeds that would colonize our borders and beds while we were busy with ‘front burner’ tasks. But I didn’t pay much attention to the six inch stems with almost bay like leaves and an ambitious yet delicate little stema that seemed to lift its chin to the sun.
Flashforward through a summer of demolition, architectural meetings and raising three kids under eight, and that little upstart outgrew me, thankfully. I had never heard of pokeweek until it demanded my attention, making me duck down to traverse a path in my own backyard.
Pokeweed is native to most of the United States and northeastern Canada. While all parts of the plant are toxic to people and animals, it used to be a somewhat common dish, especially in the south, known as polk sallet or polk salad. If the young leaves are boiled several times, it renders the plant not only edible, but nutritious. But this sort of sustenance takes knowledge and time. And we’re just getting back into sourdough breads and the occasional attempt at canned tomatoes.
That first year, the kids and I harvested the berries, not to eat, of course but to do as the indigenous people had done for centuries in this country, to dye some of our old shirts and house rags. It didn’t work, but it was educational and fun. I must have missed a step.
My annual relationship with this strong yet elegant survivor of a plant has given me quite a lot to think about.
How often have I stepped on or walked past something or someone, seemingly small in some way, who held such surprising potential? In my busy life, when would I ever allow anything or anyone, including myself, the time or space to develop and mature to full height and surprising beauty? When you start noticing pokeweed sprouts, it is hard to believe they’ll grow up to eight feet tall, if you let them.
I want change now. I want growth now. But pokeweed takes its time, starting so small, ending so big and so elegant and so beautiful.
Gardening teaches me a lot about patience, hope and reward for effort. But pokeweed is not a part of my garden. I don’t do anything but let it be itself, and it rewards just the same. No effort required beyond acceptance, patience and observation.
I’ll need time to think about what I just said. Perhaps, next year, I will be even more observant of the tiny starts. Maybe, someday, I will attempt dying cloth again with my children, and it will work. It’s all there; the beauty, the elegance, the growth and inspiration, in those tiny starts. And they’ll be there next year, too, if I stand back and let them reach their full potential.
