Jolly Green for Shellie ...

Listen up, City Slickers ... when you go into Pesce or The Palm and you order the Asparagus as your side to that juicy steak or filet of something wonderful from the sea, at some point it looked like this. Shellie Rice, my kitty katty corner neighbor in Houston, specifically requested a photo of our patch in action. So let me take this a step further for Farming Lesson 101 ...

Asparagus is native to most of Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia. The flower is greenish yellow, bell shaped, and the fruit is a small red berry. There is a recipe for it's preparation in the oldest cookbook around, Apicius's 3rd Century AD "De Re Coquinaria". It did not say "nuke, covered, with a bit of water in Corningware for 5.5 minutes".

It's a great diuretic and it's rhizomes and roots are used ethnomedially to treat urinary tract infections, bladder and kidney issues. It's also believed to be an aphrodisiac because of it's phallic shoots. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans ate it ... and so do we, starting next spring. It has to grow and go to seed two yeas prior to harvest.