Thursday am. It's a cool morning, and as we are about to leave, I turn back to the house (with doggie eyes upon me) for my red knit hat. We walk west, and at the intersection, the dogs tug me towards the Old Portland Highway. Turning onto the gravel road at Holman, I notice again a large clump of Queen Anne's Lace. This plant seems ubiquitous in Portland. I see clumps next to most roads when driving around, some standing at least 3 to 4 feet high, some just bursting up from the ground. As I examine the flowers, I notice how among the developing flowers, one is folded in, almost like a cup with a lacey green collar underneath. Four or five more flowers unfurl in succesive stages until the largest one demonstrates the qualities we normally notice while whipping past in a car--a large disc of tiny white flowers. What you wouldn't notice from a car, is the one tiny little black flower at the center.

I learn from Matthew Wood, in his Book of Herbal Wisdom, that this plant's latin name Daucus Carota and that this is indeed the wild ancestor from whom the modern carrot has been gradually developed. He also mentions the connections of this plant to fairy tale, as " . . . the lacey round umbel flower top looks like a net of white lace into which has fallen a single drop of blood." The pricking of a finger is certainly a common theme in fairy tales.

The dogs and I continue down west quite a ways, coming to one of our favorite turning points. There's a dirt path between paved roads. On one side of the path is an overgrown vacant lot which soon will be developed into houses. I stop to collect a few apples from the blackberry infested, mammoth old Gravenstein trees standing there.