Ellen Lewis

Calling In, by Loretta Ross. About making allies rather than enemies.

Plus I forgot to count rewinding skeins, chopping mushrooms, simmering mushrooms and yarn, drying, washing, untangling. Probably another twenty hours or more of all that.

I think it was about two months of knitting, maybe an hour or so a day.
And a season of mushroom foraging, which is hard to calculate. It has to be the right time of year, and I have to get lucky while taking a walk out in a park somewhere and find mushrooms within reach because I'm old and not very limber.

The purple and green and grayish green are Western Jackolantern, Omphalatos olivascens. The yellow is a variety of rustgills, Gymnopilus species. The rusty orange is old man's beard lichen, Usnea species. No mordants, most mushrooms don't need them.

Our puffballs are white and I don't imagine they give much color. However I have used the Dyer's Puffball or Dead Man's Foot, Pisolithus tinctorius, which isn't an actual puffball, to make a dark chocolate brown.

Colorwork is in some ways easier than socks, though socks are more portable.

This sweater I just finished for my daughter is made of commercial wool dyed with locally foraged mushrooms.

If I were single (and I am both suitable and not suitable in all sorts of other ways) I would be put off by the expectation of failure.
Why expect failure in relationship? Do you want someone who sees you as a challenge, not as a partner? Or as a partner in a doomed venture?
Everything has a lifespan.
Getting to the end can and often is seen as failure. Not a very realistic stance, but one I'm struggling with every time I see my wrinkles or feel how my old body doesn't do what it once did. But really, that's a success, I got this far.
Convincing oneself to accept a certain outcome as final is simply trying to avoid seeing what's further along. One might end up single. One might end up partnered. One might end up grieving. One might end up thinking about dead ends rather than being willing to keep following that little trace that might be a path around the other side of that boulder, just to find out.
But no one in their right mind wants a partner who has his mind set that relationships are not going to work and that he is torturing her with his companionship.

it reminds me of Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum)

I planted alexanders a number of years ago. It has naturalized like gangbusters, to the point where I fear I have introduced a new invasive species.
If only my native umbellifers were as prolific.
Alexanders has a very wierd taste. It's useful for about two weeks a year, when the stalks are tender. The leaves are way too bitter to use. Maybe the seeds would be a decent spice, but I haven't bothered to try.
The anise swallowtail is the main (and most desired) insect I have seen on umbelliferae around here, and I don't see any on alexanders. So even though I eat it every year, I have started to remove it, and continue to try to establish natives like biscut root and yampah, as well as learning to eat native cow parsnip and my local angelica (hendersonii).

Regarding cherry bark medicine:
Easier than boiling it and then adding vodka as a preservative is tincturing it (soaking it in the vodka) and then adding sugar or honey to make it thick and tasty.
Yes, it's the inner bark that's medicinal, but if you just peel the bark off the wood with a potato peeler, you don't have to separate it, you can just use it all because you will be straining it out anyway. Fresh or dried works, but if you're going to tincture it, there's no reason to bother drying it first. Drying is primarily for if you need to store it a while. If you want to make tea you separate the inner bark and dry it.

Regarding carving:
My husband and I recently took a spoon carving class. Partly power tools, partly hand tools. We found dry fruit wood quite workable. And it's ready to finish when you're done carving and doesn't warp.

Fava beans are the only vegetable I had success with for the first couple of years.
Cardoons do well with little care. They were my second success.
I think the third was mountain papaya. Thrives with little care but took a few years to bear.
Chard grows but I don't like it. I finally killed it on purpose.
Perennial buckwheat is easy and makes a very well-flavored spinach substitute.
I finally have some perennial kale going - ot maybe it's normal kale that I'm harvesting as a perennial. I can't keep purple tree collards going. Daubenton's kale might do OK if it ever got any water.
Chilacayote thrives but is next to useless.
I got a little chicory and a few peas, a coupla string beans, some celery.
Pellitory-of-the-wall is pretty intervention-free, but quite boring. I got nettles established but someone requested I remove them.
I have established dandelions and eat them regularly, so at this point they are among the easiest.
Runner beans are pretty easy.
Rhubarb does OK.
I get a few potatoes from some I planted years ago.
I get a small crop of yacon pretty dependably.
I have failed radishes, squash (summer and winter both), onions, jerusalem artichokes (topinambour), turnips, tomatoes, arugula, lettuce, chayote, amaranth, yams, sweet potatoes, purslane and probably several others.
Mulberry leaves and grape leaves are easy, but grape leaves are fairly special-purpose.
Sochan is succeeding, slowly. I imagine it will pick up in a year or two.
Violet leaves are easy, but not great. I tend to forget to use them. Maybe that's because they're in the front yard and I go in back to harvest dinner.
Asparagus is pretty easy to keep alive, but hard to get to be prolific.
Artichokes ditto.
Several people mentioned aloe. How do you use aloe as a vegetable?

I just cooked a gallon or so of coarsely chopped mature spring mulberry leaves in a couple of cups of curry sauce (coconut milk, red lentils, curry powder) for half/three quarters of an hour.
The leaves got soft enough to eat and remained chewy enough to have some substance and it was yummy over rice.