The 3rd Indigenous Peoples Celebration, held last Saturday at beautiful Machicomoco State Park, proved to be a pleasant way to spend a clear, warm, early November morning and afternoon. Parents, children, teens, and grandparents visited the tents of various local and state organizations to learn about the history, lives, and lore of the earliest inhabitants of the Middle Peninsula.
Gloucester Extension Master Gardeners focused on native plants and their many uses as medicine and food. The current uptake in interest about native plants led to informative conversations between visitors and Master Gardeners. It is never too late to learn something new, and three or four questions arose that sent me to my gardening books and the internet once the day was over.
A friendly mother-and-daughter duo visiting from the Western North Carolina-Eastern Tennessee area were particularly interesting. The mother is a wildcrafter, a person who harvests native herbs, other plants, and fungi rather than gr...