Under June's Corn Planting Moon, our hearts are closely attuned to the plant kingdom, or so say the Chippewa sachems.  You can lie on your belly in the garden and hear the plants grow. Honest. Grass, corn, garlic mustard, thistles, they leap from the soil and reach for the sky, uttering a faint rustle.  Schwsssshhh, streeeeetchhhh.  Lying prone in the greenery is an agreeable pastime, if you can avoid ticks, chiggers, spiders and all the other small denizens of the undergrowth who wish to refresh themselves at the fount of your vital bodily juices. 

If you lack a garden, you can improvise -- claim listening rights in a park, do a stake-out in a friend's back forty, or take up an observation post in some forgotten jungle along the railroad tracks.  (Should it be that grass-listening in public creates an embarrassment for you, you can always pretend to be combing the turf for a lost golf ball or conducting a survey for the Department of Natural Resources.) Perhaps the normal consequences of aging, exposure to hard rock music in your heedless youth, or any of a thousand other possible assaults on your eardrums has robbed you of hearing soft stirrings at zero decibels. If so, it's a pity. You'll just have to trust me and one great poetic chronicler of rural life in southwestern Wisconsin, when we say it is possible to hear plants grow. (Cf. The Land Remembers, by Ben Logan.) 

On my rural property, the winners among plants in the race to grow up and be a nuisance to mankind are the prodigious stinging nettles. Urtica dioica --urtica,  in the  original Latin meaning "I burn!" They aren't just a-kiddin'! No one would blame you if you relegated this "weed" to your enemies list after an unfriendly encounter that left a tingling, burning rash for hours. (You can treat the smarting place by rubbing it with a handy jewelweed or dock leaf, by the way, and thereby considerably shorten the period of misery.) Unlike poison ivy, which has nothing to recommend it, don't write off the troublesome nettle too quickly. Like our friend the dandelion, it has fallen from grace but was once a plant much prized by our ancestors, who knew the natural healing and nutritional properties of the plant life surrounding them. That was when all but a few lived on the land and the nearest pharmacy was a long walk or ride away.  

The nettle is overdue to make a comeback, deserving of our respect and exploitation. My sainted mother, raised as an Iowa farm girl, knew to make barrels of nettle tea to pour on her vegetable plants mid-season, to give them a second wind. There are many other gardeners who are reviving or never forgot these wise old ways. Scour the internet under the topic of nettles and you'll see what I mean. When I taxed my husband with the catalogue of virtues attributed to the nettle species -- minerals in great amounts, the entire alphabet of vitamins, considerable protein, the reputed ability to cure most everything that ails you  from arthritis to xenophobia (with the  exception of mortality)-- he exclaimed, "The perfect food!" Right on, if you can believe medical annals kept since at least the 1600s, and I do. 

When my spouse uttered the abovementioned perspicacious remark, he was manfully staring down at his lunch. The main attraction that day was a bowl of vibrant, blue-green nettle-potato soup, a sprinkling of violets (high in vitamin C) artfully floating on top. That's my favorite and most gorgeous recipe for using nettles thus far, though they have appeared in supporting roles in stews, chilies, and stir frys.  Even The Joy of Cooking contains a recipe for nettle soup, although it is blander than mine and colorless. If I may boast, Monet wouldnever want to paint a still life of that other concoction, as he would mine. You need not fear being stung as you ladle nettle soup into your mouth, for as soon as the nettle leaves wilt in the cooking pot, the stinging hairs are disarmed. My advice to the timid chef is, be not afraid, go wild! The more generous you are in adding nettles, the more vibrant the shade of green will be in the soup pot. and the more potent will be the fresh chlorophyll flavor released into it, a delight to even the most jaded palate.  

I champion the nettle because it is plentiful, it is incredibly healthful, and it is free. As a further consideration, you might want to store away this useful tidbit of information to unpack during the biblical seven lean years that are coming.   Five years ago, I was labeled an alarmist when I tried my utmost to convince an august gathering of local politicians in California that food shortages were headed our way. This sterling moment occurred in my home county, where some of the richest soils in the world were then --and still are -- being paved over for sprawling, ill-designed housing projects. A lot seemed to me to be riding on saving the fertile soils against the day of future need. In response, my County Supervisors rolled their eyes and rubber-stamped the next huge development proposal to appear on their docket. (Today those same developments are going bankrupt, by the by.)  

These days my fellow "alarmists" and I have the revenge of being proved correct, but believe me, there's no joy in my heart when dire prophecies come true. On a daily basis the news tells of food riots (Egypt, Pakistan, and sub-Saharan Africa) and increased hijacking of relief grain shipments wherever people are starving and there is an enterprising criminal element. A widening circle of suffering is inevitable as vast tracts of arable land are adversely affected by climate change.   

"Sheesh!," you might be tempted to mutter, reaching for another slice of pizza that lately has jumped in price to cost about as much as the Hope Diamond, "these danged nattering nabobs of negativism!"   I'm just saying it would be smart to reexamine our options as the tide of food instability drifts towards us.  It would appear that no country on earth will be immune to the changes and, therefore, the pressures of feeding itself. The universe is too much of a piece for dislocations in one quarter not to send out a rippling wave that affects one and all, as we are finding out to our sorrow. 

Enough said. We favored few need not wait around in dreary anticipation of thin rations.  As food prices skyrocket here in the States (in the wake of poor harvests, expensive oil, and the diversion of  grain crops to subsidized corn, among other explanations given for the rise), there are myriad practical things we can do: we can start by protecting the best soils as you would the family honor. Next we can restore abused soil -- a very gratifying game as each year's harvest exceeds the one past. Supplement your ornamentals with attractive fruiting trees and vines, scatter lettuces amongst the petunias, and strawberry plants along the walkways. Almost anybody can take up container gardening, even if you don't own a dirt patch. Finally, we can mulch like crazy around all plantings with whatever is at hand --grass clippings, newspapers, even hair cuttings-- to retain moisture, replenish the soil and suppress weeds. That's just the short list on the road to food independence, an easy first step. 

When I was a kid, "mulch" was a household word, thanks to my green-thumbed gardening mother.  Once you see its benefits, falling in love with mulch --the beauty of it in theory and the saving grace of it in practice --is a foregone conclusion. As easy as loving nettles and the pleasure of a car that gets 40 mpg. Since this is an election year, I offer an updated, earth-friendly motto, which I hope the winning presidential candidate will adopt as his/her rallying cry: 

"A nettle in every pot and a hybrid in every garage!"