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I love the look of indoor plants. But they hate me.

I have killed their friends. Not from malice. Just neglect .

Gifts of potted flowers shrivveled up when they came to live with me. Cute little herb gardens would hang in a few days before dying. I even killed 'foliage' plants that everyone says you can't kill.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to children and pets. They let you know when they need something. But plants are stuck in one spot and suffer silently.

I considered dried flower arrangements but they seemed brittle and dead and a little creepy.

Then I discovered IKEA fake plants. IKEA has the greatest fake plants ever – nice and green and spiffy. They don’t actually resemble any real plants,either. They just look good. And green.

I just finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes. What an experience!

First, I picked up the greasy spatula and put it into my black granite composite sink (which was made-in-some-far-away-place), then I turned on the shiny “brushed nickel” faucet (also made-in-some-far-away-place), and hot water arrived through a white pvc pipe (yes, made-in-some-far-away-place) from my basement water heater (MISFAP!).

Then, I washed the ceramic coated frying pan (MISFAP), with a plastic sponge (MISFAP). The clear plastic detergent bottle (MISFAP) bore a label with the names of two plants, the palm and the olive. The green liquid inside (MISFAP) bore no resemblance to either

Then, I tossed a piece of plastic wrap (MISFAP) into the trash. This little scrap was of such a gossamer consistency that it weighed practically nothing, yet was as clear as glass and both strong and stretchy. I can’t imagine the crazy advanced technology used to produce what I so casually discarded.

When I opened the refrigerator (MISFAP), a light came on and cold air greeted me, way colder than the air I was standing in. Behind the door, small machines and computer chips were toiling away. An array of cold white objects and devices (all MISFAP) promised to maintain the chill.

After setting the butter dish back on a shelf, I wondered about the cow that produced the butter. Did she have a personality? Did she have a story? Did she get to live outside under the sun? I hoped she did.

I stepped across the kitchen floor and felt the cool tiles under my feet. I wondered about the mountain in India where the granite came from, how it had been formed over eons, deep underground, then sliced into perfect squares for me to walk on.

My kitchen contains substances that are so altered from their original form as to be completely unrecognizable.

All came from far, far away and were produced by the labor of countless anonymous bodies and minds in fabulous and unknowable ways.

But there was one element of the morning that was different.

Dandelions.

Every morning when the weather is warm, I collect dandelion leaves from the yard. Dandelions grow all over but the best ones are in a little patch right outside the back door.

I have a sense that each plant s a little creature, aware of the sun, the other plants that crowd around, the nibbling rabbits, and of me as well. I try to nip off only a few leaves from each plant.

Inside, I chop them up and add them to the frying pan.

Then while the morning sun shines on the (MISFAP) kitchen, I enjoy this small representative from my own back yard.

It’s an amazing experience! Now, if I could only find some coffee beans out there.

What if your entire yard was planted with salad greens? And all you had to do was walk outside and pick a bowl whenever you liked?

It seems like that’s the case in my yard. I have recently discovered that most of the “weeds” in my yard are actually edible, and surprisingly tasty. So I've been making yard salad.In just a few minutes, here’s what I was able to harvest: dandelions, wild violets, creeping Charlie, wood sorrel, mugwort, lambs quarters, garlic mustard, grape leaves, purslane, and plantain seeds.

After I picked the weeds for my yard salad this afternoon, I looked in the refrigerator and found a plastic container of organic arugula, which I added to the mix. The label said it came from California. I imagined seeds being planted in a field, tended, watered, fertilized, hopefully not sprayed, picked, apparently washed three times, dried and stuffed into a plastic box, sealed up, loaded into a refrigerated truck, driven thousands of miles to Ohio, unloaded at the grocery store, set inside a well-lit produce bin, tossed into a shopping cart, zapped with a laser beam at the checkout counter, packed into a plastic bag and driven down the road to end up in my refrigerator.

Whew!

That’s a lot of action for 4 ounces of arugula.

Sharing a bowl with them, their foraged neighbors were not so coddled or well-traveled. The yard greens had been planted by Nature, and certainly not tended, fertilized or sprayed. They had to depend on rain for their water.

Until I picked them, they lived outside in the yard. The only washing they got was a quick rinse in the colander.. After being chopped and splashed with olive oil and vinegar, all of these greens tasted great, but the yard weeds apparently have the nutritional edge. According to the multitude of websites on the subject of foraging and eating weeds, wild munchies have all sorts of benefits not found in their cultivated cousins.

Bur for me, the best reason for making a yard salad is to be reminded that there really is a free lunch. Thanks for lunch, Weeds!

I recently spent some time in a hospital. (I keep typing 'hostipal'.) Since I wasn't the patient, I took the opportunity to explore the grounds.

I tried to go for a walk. But the parking lot was for cars, not people. The autumn trees were meant to be seen through glass. Inside, there was an attractive lobby with stone and tile and earthy patterns. But the only evidence of plant life were the photos on the walls. Closeups of leaves and water droplets, all behind glass.

I did find some real plants in the cafeteria, safely quarantined in large metal bowls.

In my brief time in the hospital universe, I sensed that plants were not only irrelevant but slightly dangerous. The hospital was all about the suspicion of organic life. It was very clean and full of busy, well-meaning people, wearing over-laundered uniforms and carrying medical doodads. Bright, hard, shiny, sterile, blinking, clicking, beeping, metal and plastic. Hospital. Hostipal. Hostile.

This all started with a coupon. A restaurant coupon for $50.

It came in a ritzy magazine. (I know it's a ritzy magazine because of all the advertisements for plastic surgeons.)

In the past, my dining adventures have been limited to Mexican restaurants in strip shopping centers. And as a child, eating out was a a trip to McDonald's once a year.

I have no experience with fine dining. But.... the coupon was for my birthday, so why not give it a try.

My daughter was all on board with this, so off we went, dressed in our best, to the Fancy Restaurant .....

After letting the valet park our car we entered the dimly lit sanctuary, where we were lead past a wall of chilled wine bottles to our reserved seats. I felt small and poorly prepared. Should I have studied up on the subject? It looked way more complicated than I had assumed.

A man in a uniform jacket showed up at our table. That was already intimidating, but he also had an accent - vaguely eastern European. He brandished menus and began a long prayer (I mean description) of the various dishes this restaurant offered. There was something very important about "dry aging" the beef, which came in varieties such as "porterhouse", "NY strip", and "filet mignon". I pretended to comprehend, as the realization of my utter inadequacies became more and more apparent.

My knowledge of beef was that it came from a male version of a cow. My cooking experience was with the ground variety which didn't seem as connected to an animal.

We acted as if we needed to consult with each other over the menu, and the uniformed man slinked off. OMG, I said, did you see the prices? What is the difference between a porterhouse and a NY strip and a filet mignon?

She didn't know either, having grown up on hamburgers and tacos.

We decided they must all be about the same because they were all seriously EXPENSIVE. I kept thinking how much ground beef I could buy for a single entree, but hey, we had a coupon!

The man in uniform showed up again, this time with an i-pad that displayed the cocktail menu. I considered ordering one but 1 - they were EXPENSIVE, 2 - they were made with things like tequila and vodka - yuck! and 3 - a single sip would mush up my brain so much that I would probably order something even more EXPENSIVE.

Fighting a huge up-welling of inadequacy and humiliation, I asked if we could split the "dry aged NY strip" entree. And, no, we didn't need a side dish, since we had already ordered the fried calamari appetizer, and there was a basket of fancy bread, too, and a giant slab of butter.

Was the uniformed man ok with our order? What was his position anyway? Who were these other people in white aprons filling up our water glasses?

I felt as if I was in a temple to the cult of Fine Dining, with various priests and functionaries dressed in their religious garments. The table was an altar, with all the items set about just so, forks and glasses and plates, all upon a pure white cloth.

The two of us had entered this establishment to participate in the "service". A third functionary arrived, a woman in a brown uniform. She carried two pure white plates, with a little chunk of brown meat upon each. This must be the $45 "dry aged NY strip", since I had no idea what to expect, maybe something with a large bone?

It felt like this was a sort of ceremony. Since were were preparing to eat the body of an animal that was killed for this purpose, maybe it was proper that there should be a religious element to this event.

But this cult was focused on the preparation of the food, not the source. All the credit was being given to the process of "dry aging" and grilling, and not a single word was mentioned about the real source, the poor animal who had munched grass and flicked flies sometime in the past.

It was as if the raw material for this magical act of preparation had just come out of nowhere.

We nibbled our meat, which tasted like meat. It was tender. We were both puzzled about why this was so appallingly expensive. We were looking forward to getting out of this place.

But not so fast - since it was my birthday, our man in uniform came back with two thin fluted glasses of champagne with a large red raspberry in each one. Then another plate arrived, with two little round dessert objects and the words "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate in the middle.

This was just lovely, and quite unexpected, so we took photos before we got around to eating them.

Then, the ceremony was over and it was time to pass the plate and take up the offering, which in our case was the coupon and my comforting green American Express card.

The priest whisked off our contribution and we waited while the magical numbers were calculated. Kept wondering how far our $50 coupon would go. When he returned, we were relieved that our coupon had done it's own magic, and the American Express did the rest.

There were no hymns to usher us out of the temple, but the valet ran out into the parking lot and retrieved our car so that we could return to the real world.

All the way home we talked about the weirdness of "fine dining". Perhaps if we had been familiar with the way the ceremony worked, we wouldn't have been so intimidated. After all, lots of people do this all the time and seem to love it.

But to us, it was as if everyone we encountered could see a glowing neon sign on our heads that said "this person is clueless". The order of service, the prayer and the liturgy were completely unfamiliar. We were like Buddhists at an Episcopal church service for the first time.

Nothing made any sense. How did the process of eating food take on the trappings of a religious cult? 

The robins spent a good part of their time in these trees, swallowing the berries and then dropping to the lawns where they would bask in the sunlight or run aimlessly about while their digestive tracts drew nourishment from their meal (Albert F. Ganxer from 'The Migrant')