The 5-H Club

HEAD . HEART . HANDS . HEALTH . HAEG The intern blog for Fritz Haeg: At Home in the City at the Walker Art Center. Learn more about us.

[the5hclub]

If you managed to make it to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden this summer, you may have noticed a curious bird house hanging out under the geodesic dome of Fritz Haeg's Foraging Circle.

The bird house made it out to the garden during various events throughout the summer months. Instead of housing birds, the lid of the box hinged up to reveal writing utensils and response cards asking the curious individual to answer a question, share a recipe, draw a picture, or perform and describe some task etc...

Now that the summer of 2013 is officially over, I thought is would be a good time to look back at some of the responses from the bird house. 

  I love that someone even took the time to be this obstinate.  

We received a bunch of really good drawings. This is probably formally the best drawing, although I'm not sure that's what the artist intended.

By far the cutest, and my favorite response by far. 

  We issued special response cards for World Listening Day. People really struggled to express sound through written language. I appreciate this persons effort.

  In addition to traditional responses, we received several 'sculptures'. Unfortunately most of them didn't survive being shoved through the small return hole in the bird house.

Hopefully the birdhouse will resurrect in some form as we move into the colder months, so keep watch!

-Bjorn

[the5hclub]

Preparing flower baths for the New England Women's Herb Conference with Deb Soule...I love August.

-Bridget

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I need to listen to The Splendid Table when I go running. I just do.  The most recent episode, Eating Wild, features our own darling Fritz Haeg talking about Edible Estate #15. He says some pretty wise stuff about this moment in history we are in...

-Bridget

[the5hclub]

After college I worked at The Woolman Semester School in Nevada City, CA, where high school students take classes like environmental science, global justice, and peace studies. I spent a lot of my time working in the garden with students, watering, turning compost, bringing in our harvest for community meals. I'd never gardened in California before, where new seeds had to be netted to keep the quail out, and summer was so dry you felt like your footsteps would start a fire in the grass. In late fall, I sent my mother, who lives in Massachusetts, some dry rattlesnake pole beans saved from Woolman's garden, which she grew, and saved seeds from, and sent me, and so on, so these beans have been going back and forth between us for five years now.

They are ridiculously happy in my Minneapolis garden this year. -Bridget

[the5hclub]

Can you help me identify some berries I foraged last night? They look like blackberries, but their canes had no thorns, and they're very difficult to stem. Also they taste delicious.

Thornless varieties of both blackberries and black raspberries exist! It's hard to say without a picture... Or a pie... Maybe if you can point me in the direction of this berry patch, I can help you out. (With eating.) --katherine

[the5hclub]

I think garlic is my favorite thing to harvest and keep--in braids or bunches, it always looks so beautiful in the kitchen. Here's some tied with an evil eye charm my mom brought me from Turkey....

-Bridget

[the5hclub]

Tomorrow comes!

Another Free First Saturday is just around the corner! We've got a ton of really great activities planned for tomorrow.  Whether you want to crochet like Fritz Haeg with Bridget and Will, dye wool or whittle wood with Bjorn and me led by the Two Rivers Folk School, or mash some botanicals with Katherine and artist Jim Proctor, you'll be sure to have your hands full!  Emily Saunders and Jen Murphy will be crafting in the Foraging Circle when you're ready for more.  Don't worry, though!  When you need a break, you can watch some contemporary dance by Momentum or settle in for a couple of really fantastic films inside the building. Come before you check out the Uptown Art Fair, come after you check out the Uptown Art Fair, but be sure to check out both! It's an Art! Art! Art! kind of weekend!

[the5hclub]

Herb shears on a bed of thyme.

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Will vs. Weeds

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Happy Friday!

Katherine and I did some great work out at the circle today and I've been working on a pair of signs for our super great (sort of breaking but soon to be repaired) wagons!  Raspberries are starting to take shape among the brambles and they've got the thorns to prove it while our wild strawberries truly are going wild forest-style in the woodland.  It can't be long now--and hopefully we'll be able to get a few pies-worth without a repeat attack from our cherry thieving friends! Since my phone can't take pictures (I know, who am I, right?) you'll just have to stop by sometime to see the signs! In the meantime, here's a picture of a turtle to lift your spirits.

Happy Friday!

[the5hclub]

In breaking sculpture garden news: for a moment there, the Spoonbridge's wasn't the only Cherry in the garden.

These beauties bejeweled our foraging circle for a few days

...but were mysteriously filched from their little tree before they could become a pie for the hungry interns. Who stole them? Was it birds? Squirrels? Museum patrons?

...or was it  Claes Oldenburg himself?

[the5hclub]

One Beautiful Monday

When others dutifully returned to their work week for the last few days leading up to tomorrow's festivities, I had the pleasure to bike around the city specifically in search of something that people usually glance towards as they pass. Plants probably aren't the first thing that comes to mind when somebody says 'social justice.'  In fact, they probably wouldn't make the top ten or maybe even fifty!  However, plants can be used in many ways to promote a more egalitarian life. Community Gardens, whether based in beautification or food production, are a great example of how plants can enter the conversations about social justice.  Some, like Youth Farm, focus on teaching youth how to interact with the world around them while others provide a place for immigrants or the elderly to continue growing their own food.  Others simply seek to make a place more beautiful!  Some people even maintain plants and gardens on other properties like vacant lots, condemned sites, or, even more plainly, behind a bus stop, as part of a relatively new movement known as Guerilla Gardening!

  As I biked through Minneapolis, I began to notice something exciting.  Community Gardens, Urban Agriculture, and Guerilla Gardening aside, it made me so happy to see so many grassless lawns.  Don't get me wrong, a pristine lawn is an accomplishment in its own right, but I never realized how many people are adopting a less traditional style.  From flowers and ferns to full on gardens of tomatoes, leafy greens, and fruit trees, the city is full of lawns that don't conform!  Maybe someday every lawn will be an edible estate!

Anyway, my bike ride was a huge success and found some great stuff to map with Katie Bachler!  Everybody should come out the Walker this Saturday to share your stories about your favorite places in the city with us at the Foraging Circle!  We'll be creating a combined map and showcasing everyone's work in about a month. And, as an added bonus, you can stop and get some seed bombs from Bjorn to start guerilla (or non-guerilla) gardening for yourself!  --Brett 

[the5hclub]

The stinging nettles growing in the "prairie wetland" section of the Foraging Circle are looking gorgeous.

Well,  I haven't always thought nettles were gorgeous.  When I was little, spring was the terrible season in which my mother made me drink large warm glasses of nettle juice. Though I dreaded it, the sweet, metallic, green-brown juice was required, by household law, to be downed before dinner.

But like so many childhood enemies , I did grow to love them. The about-face really happened a few years ago while I was apprenticing for the amazing herbalist Deb Soule, of Avena Botanicals (http://www.avenabotanicals.com/.)  Nettles are one of Deb's favorite herbs. She drinks nettle tea every morning in spring to gather strength for the summer season. She uses the powerful plant to help many of her clients with countering anemia and increasing blood-flow (among many other uses.)

That metallic taste I despised is in fact due to the large amount of iron and other minerals contained in the plant's leaves and stems. Deb even encourages picking a few leaves bare handed, allowing the nettle's hairy leaves to sting you. The nettle's sting is a wonderful, beneficial "poison" that can stimulate blood circulation--much like the sting of a honeybee.

Deb even uses blanched nettles (blanching removes the sting from the leaves) to make pesto, a means of getting even die-hard nettle-phobes to devour them--if properly prepared with walnuts, garlic, and plenty of parmesan cheese. Here's a basic recipe:

Ingredients: 2 giant bunch of stinging nettles, blanched 1/2 cup olive oil 1-2 cloves garlic 1/3 cup parmigiano cheese 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/2 cup pine nuts or walnuts

Instructions: Blend all ingredients into sauce and add to pasta. Salt and pepper to taste.  Add more parmigiano! Eat!    --Bridget

[the5hclub]

Everyone loves a peony. Last day of June blooms!

By the way! My garden policy is to immediately cut flowers as soon as they bloom. In theory, deadheading— or removing spent flower blossoms— keeps the plant generating more flowers. (If the plant never finishes its bloom to seed cycle, it never gets the message to stop producing flowers. They really want to propagate.) But the real reason behind this is selfish, because I just like to bring all the pretty things inside. - Katherine

[the5hclub]

The Foraging Circle is showing some #pride this morning as the Pride Parade and Festival goes on across the street in Loring Park. 

The garden wants to march in the parade 

…but sends winged representatives instead.

Happy pride weekend!  -Bridget

[the5hclub]

Foraging Circle--What's Blooming

The summer solstice (June 21st) almost snuck by me disguised as a rain cloud.  But I managed to mark the day by making a Calendula flower essence.

As topical medicine, Calendula has strong antiseptic properties--good for healing cuts and rashes, or eliminating scars. Taken as a flower essence, Calendula can help to feel light, expansive, and even radiant! A perfect elixir for this stormy summer we're having. --Bridget

[the5hclub]

The plants in the Foraging Circle are (mostly) no longer anonymous! I still have 15 more labels to finish. Woodburning is a miracle: like etching with heat. --Katherine