Mulberry Alert

June 13, 2023June 13, 2023gotofarms 1 Comment

Mulberry Alert: It’s mulberry season– the time of year you can find berries splat on the street and cars–and best, smack in your mouth.

I’ve been checking out mulberries in my neighborhood in keeping with Mulberry Madness, an annual event sponsored by the Baltimore Orchard Project (BOP) to boost mulberries as an urban food source.

Since I’ve been investigating, I see the trees everywhere in the city, especially in Wyman Park and the 170-year-old Stone Hill neighborhood. If you don’t know where they are, look for the tell-tale signs deep purple and red splotches on the street, or on the cars. But don’t let the stains put you off. They are the source of some transformative childhood memories and nutrition rivalling blueberries.

*Passing up a natural harvest of mulberries on the street in Stone Hill neighborhood*

Mulberry memories

Nina Cardin, founder of the Baltimore Orchard Project (BOP) described how she harvested mulberries recently with two of her grandchildren. First, she gathers the materials: the sheets (to catch the mulberries), the tins (to put them in), the picker (to shake and gently beat the tree with).

They go to the tree, she writes poetically in an email, “and lay the sheets under the most promising branches, as if setting a table or arranging a bed. Then approaching the tree and in a way, asking permission to harvest, we shake the branches! the little one grabs the lower branches and shakes; the bigger one takes this special shaking stick that someone from the BOP made for me! And then the real fun begins – the berries drop like rain, all around us. They love the power they have, the connection with the tree, the bounty that falls at their feet. It is pure joy.”

Food writer Rob Kasper recalls a childhood encounter with mulberries on the way to the ball field with his rag tag baseball team. “As a boy of 10 I would climb a trio of mulberry trees that stood in a park near a baseball field. En route to a loosely organized pickup game, we ballplayers—a collection of brothers, cousins and neighborhood kids—would toss down our gloves and bats and scale the trees.

“We quickly learned to hunt for the darkest berries, discarding the tart white and red ones, fingering the dark mealy orbs and popping them into our mouths.

“Later in life I would discover deeper pleasures—the piercingly delightful taste of raspberries, low-bush blueberries and Oregon huckleberries. But as a kid, perched in a tree, shaded from the summer sun and feasting on found fruit, the mulberries seemed like treasure.”

Growing up, we feasted on a mulberry tree in the driveway of my friend Paula’s house. We dined on mulberries for a treat before going out to explore the neighborhood.

(Send your mulberry memories to the comment section below)

My friend Joyce is not so romantic about the fruit: when she first moved to Baltimore, she planted a tree in the fall to enhance the backyard. By spring, the tree was thriving. She set up a sandpile under the shade of the tree for her toddler daughter, who she dressed up to play in some pretty white pants with a new little t-shirt. When her daughter came in from playing, the pants were stained from cuff to waist in bright purple. That was how Joyce discovered she had planted a mulberry tree.

Admittedly, the mulberry has gotten a bad rap, sometimes deserving. It stains clothes, patios, cars and whatever it falls upon. Deb Howard, one of BOPs advocates, promotes the mulberry and service berries as little known, even disrespected, fruit that deserves a second bite. She eats mulberries in waffles. “It’s great to mix in yoghurt. My whole family loves mulberries.”

According to Healthline, the mulberry is an antioxidant and a great source of Vitamin C and iron, plus K & E, and other vitamins. The mulberry tree gained prominence in China for its leaves, which were the only food the silkworm would eat.

Mulberry Madness

This month volunteers are foraging for the berries from the streets and parks of Baltimore, bringing in this ignored fruit into the everyday diet of Baltimore citizens.

*Volunteers from Gertrude’s restaurant harvest mulberries in Druid Hill park and around the city. Gertrude’s is making a delectable lemon ricotta pancake to be sold at Waverly Market .*

They will collect a total of about 40-50 pounds. These are distributed to vendors as raw material for whatever delectable food they can make. Atwater’s makes mulberry jam. and Gertrude’s will create lemon ricotta pancakes with mulberries, which will be available for sale at the Waverly Farmers’ Market in Baltimore Saturday, June 17 for culmination of Mulberry Madness. There will also be mulberry soap and mulberry muffins.

Baltimore Orchard Project: increasing trees and fruit in the city

Besides promoting mulberries, the Baltimore Orchard Project has planted over 2,000 fruit trees since 2013 with the help of volunteers and the expertise and resources of the Baltimore Tree project. Cardin came up with the idea of planting fruit trees in neighborhoods that lacked access to fresh food, while she was in Boston when her husband was on sabbatical at Harvard in 2013.

” I kept reading about food deserts, community dissolution and the need to craft community cohesiveness. What can connect all this? It all pointed to fruit trees. I decided to start an organization to plant and harvest fruit trees in food deserts and vacant lots in Baltimore,” Cardin says.

The project has been doing its share to increase the tree canopy in the city, which has as its goal to increase the tree canopy by 40 percent by 2037. At the same time, the fruit trees provide a source of fresh fruit in food deserts. According to BOP, one in four Baltimore City residents live in a food desert, with limited access to fresh food.

Rather than planting a large orchard, the Baltimore Orchard Project is working on a small scale to offer individual homeowners a kind of tree kit, the Home Orchard Project (conveniently acronymed HOP), which includes a fruit tree, two blueberry bushes and perennials. HOP will plant in pre-approved neighborhoods.

Two years ago, next to the community garden in Druid Hill park, the group created an orchard of 20 fruit trees to use as a model for pruning and other kinds of workshop to demonstrate to urban tree growers how to care for their fruit trees. Volunteers worked with Tree Baltimore, which provided the trees: fig, persimmon, apple and pear. On a recent visit with Deb Howard, former president of BOP, the 2-year-old trees looked healthy, fresh and green. Wire fences surrounding each tree keep the deer out, native wildflowers are planted to keep the weeds and a device Deb calls “tree diapers,” plastic covering the roots under the mulch, keeps the moisture in.

*Deb Howard shows one of the healthy fruit trees in the orchard at Druid Hill*

“We planted this orchard to host pruning events so people could come and take the skills back,” says Deb.

Back on a walk from the park, through Stone Hill, my feet are squishing hundreds of mulberries. The berries are covering the SUVs and the street with deep purple dots. Maybe, some say, urban blight. I say it is urban delight. I savor the ripest one, nearly black, sweet and free.

*My mulberry, ready to pick at the entrance to Stony Run, entrance Keswick and 30th street. Note the huge mulberry tree to the right.* *Many mulberries are in easy picking distance of Baltimore City homes.*

Robby Wooding: Restoring land

May 31, 2023June 1, 2023gotofarms 2 Comments

“Let your food be your medicine,” Robby Wooding says, after chomping a handful of stinging nettles.

He offers me a hand full, but I decline. On the tastebuds, I think it would be a bit too prickly. But Wooding rolls the nettles up so they don’t sting. Strolling around the lush farmland that has belonged to his family for 200 years, he makes short cryptic comments.

“It’s highly nutritious,” he continues, “and good for making pesto.” And it is an alternative remedy for allergies.

The stinging nettles are just one of the medicinal herbs that Wooding has grown over 15 years ago for his herbal business. While the business is no longer going, the herbs are still thriving on Wooding’s farm, located down the road and across the Banister river from our place in Halifax County. Goldenseal, a member of the buttercup family used to aid digestion, grows here in the field. Ginseng, panacea for all kinds of ills, may be found in the forest. Wooding won’t reveal the location of the ginseng, a plant that was prized as far back as 196 AD for its curative powers. He makes various tinctures and teas of herbs as his health demands.

Wooding has taken a roundabout route to come home here after trying to survive as an artist in New York City.

“I got out of here [HalIfax] as fast as I could,” after high school he says, as he relaxes in a chair in a country kitchen that looks like his great grandmother might pop in any minute with a tray of biscuits. (She was born in an adjoining room.) In high school he loved abstract art and intent on making it as an artist, he went to Rutgers for a graduate degree.

In New York City for five years, he painted in between jobs in construction But he couldn’t break through the art market. He finally decided to come back to the old homeplace, where his family has successfully raised tobacco and other crops for the last century.

They made a decent income on tobacco before price supports were discontinued. The question was: what could replace tobacco as a money crop? Following his belief in the healing power of plants, Wooding decided to try raising medicinal herbs. “I was trying to get an alternative to tobacco. There was an ad in Progressive Farmer for ginseng,” he recalls. He bought 100,000 plants and sowed them in the forest to begin Southern Herbals. For fifteen years, Wooding’s herbal business attracted a following from Charlottesville and the surrounding area. But the sales did not amount to a living wage; he went back to school to become a nurse.

He worked to keep the farm up, using some old tractors to bush-hog the land. He raised hay for feed but it was a huge undertaking to keep up. Then the farmer who was helping him out retired. He was about to give up, until my cousin told him about Merlin, the same Merlin who helped us to restore our farmland. And then the magic occurred. At least, it seems like magic, when you look out at the lush fields, full of clover, butterflies and bees on a spring day, but in fact, Merlin and his three sons work hard to plow, plant and sell the organic agricultural produce.

With its authentic wood buildings, the farm looks as it did 100 years ago. Wooding does little painting or upkeep on the buildings that somehow still stand.

It’s taken a few years for this former tobacco farm, which was notorious for depleting the soil, to reach this pinnacle of fertility. For the past month, the farm has sported a rich crop cover of purple vetch, rye grass and red clover dense as an Oriental carpet laid across the rolling hills. Just this week, the cover crops were turned over into in a rich soil mix for soybeans. Next year, they will plant sunflowers, Wooding hopes, as part of the crop rotation, that keeps the fertility in the ground.

In other more formal gardens, the purple vetch and clover would be rooted out as weeds. But here they are nourishing the soil using regenerative methods without pesticides.

The little bit of pesticide used for the hay had wasted away after three years, the period required for organic designation.

Wooding is grateful for the renovation of the land that has revived without chemicals or other additives. “I am so thankful. I was at the point of despair. Merlin came and drove around the fields.” He had a super tractor, compared to the old vehicle Wooding had used before. There is the addition of lime and chicken poo, plus the cover crops. This year the crop will be soybeans to be marketed to organic producers.

What if you get an outbreak of insects, or overwhelming tall grasses, or other invaders? How can you avoid using pesticides?

“That’s simple,” says Wooding. “Don’t do it!”

Amid the pomp, think of King Charles as a sustainable gardener

May 8, 2023May 8, 2023gotofarms Leave a comment

No, I am not among the thousands lined up to see the royal show in London. I was sitting in my humble abode in my pjs the morning of the coronation, in awe of the display of riches.

All that gold , it appeared solid. It actually was wood layered with gold leaf. The display of riches, from the crown to the carriage, made me think of how the jewels could be cashed in to help the British economy and the unemployed. But to give Charles his due, I go to the image of Charles as a gardener and environmentalist. On the website of Highgrove House, where the king and q1ueen make their home, I am looking at the picture of Charles feeding his chickens at Highgrove, where some 180 chickens roam free-range.

King Charles has been under rated for most of his life. He was a royal cad the way he treated Diana but now under such scrutiny let’s give him credit for his artistic vision and his consciousness of the environment. His gardens exist “to please the eye and sit in harmony with nature,” he says, according to the website at Highgrow House.

The king and queen are going to be living at Highgrove, not the stuffy Buckingham Palace. When you tire of the incessant coverage of the coronation, take a look at the beautiful sustainable gardens at Highgrove at the website here, where he has been living and tending to his flowers and fruits for the last 40 years. The organic eggs and produce are sold at Highgrove and other local markets. The gardens, open to the public, feature a 4-acre wildflower meadow, a thyme garden with 20 different kinds of thyme, and a stumpery and much more. God save the sustainable gardener under the crown!

Wine bubbles like champagne at Elk Run

April 18, 2023April 20, 2023gotofarms Leave a comment

Tuesday at 11 a.m., too early for drinking wine but champagne is good any time. So I take a sip of this bubbling liquid –all made, from grapes to bottling, on the premises of Elk Run Winery in Frederick County, Maryland.

*Fred Wilson pours wine in the wine-tasting room at Elk Run Winery.*

Now I am told by the connoisseurs we can’t call it champagne. That title is reserved for the champagne grown in the Champagne region of France. This is “sparkling wine,” with that light celebratory taste and just the right amount of sweetness that lingers like the smell of magnolia. Call it champagne’s American cousin.

Today is champagne bottling day, which concludes with a toast. I clink glasses with Fred Wilson, Elk Run owner and vintner.

This bottle, reflecting the work of two years, is cause for celebration. Satisfied with this batch Fred holds the glass up to the light to see the bubbles dancing up to the top.

Method champenoise

“You want the bubbles to be close together and keep flowing up.” Fred follows the methode champenoise, where there is a second fermentation that occurs in the bottle.

The methode champenoise, consisting of two fermentations, is complex and meticulous. In the first fermentation, the wine is made. In the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added, which makes sparkling wine or champagne. For more on champagne making, read here.

No other winery in Maryland adheres to the official champagne method as strictly as Elk Run, Fred says. “It’s unique. One (winery) does it with grape juice. We do it with grapes we grow. Fermenting is mostly controlled the way we do it. You have to make sure it finishes the fermentation.

‘You can make champagne out of anything,” he explains. But his preference for this delicate drink is the Pinot Noir grape.

While he uses a machine to press the grapes and cork the bottles, much is done by hand, from planting to riddling, the process of gently rotating the bottles and keeping them at a 90 degree angle to collect the bits of yeast in the neck of the bottle. Fred riddles the bottles every day.

Since retirement in 1994, Fred has become a working expert in every aspect of wine-making with the help of his 32-year-old son Julian and Tory Hardy, an aspiring chef who comes on Tuesdays for bottling. He hires workers for harvest.

“Doing it by hand you can control it though machines are better now,” he says.

Today in a cavernous cool building, filled with oak barrels and steel vats, Fred and Tory have just finished the second and final stage of fermentation for 12 bottles.

The process is curious–earlier this morning, Tory and Fred put bottles of the wine in the freezer to chill the yeast particles, known as lees. When they carefully removed the plastic cap of the bottle, the lees are spilled out, or disgorged, and when the bottle is corked, the bubble-causing carbon dioxide is trapped in the clear wine liquid.

*The sediment that has been “disgorged” in the second fermentation*

*Fred used a corking machine to apply maximum pressure*

With the cork (and carbon dioxide gas) firmly in the bottle, Fred and Tory adeptly molded foil around the cork, and twisted wire around it. Then they applied the Elk Run label on the bottle.

*Tory shows off the final product of the day, freshly corked and labeled*

With all those hours and time spent for this one bottle, Elk Run sparkling wine is a bargain at just $32 when you consider vintage 2002 Dom Perignon can cost over $500. It can be a bit hard to ship, so you have to go to Elk Run to buy it. However, most of the other wines are available to buy online here.

“We could add a few extra dollars but we want people to enjoy it,” Fred says. Elk Run manages to break even, with most of the profits derived from events and visitors for wine-tastings.

Starting with a historic tavern and two acres

Fred and his late wife Carol began Elk Run winery with another associate on two acres off rural Liberty Road near Mount Airy in 1979. “There were eight (wineries) then. Now there are over 100,” says Fred, with a hint of a southern accent from his native Hampton Roads, Virginia.

*The wine-tasting rooms adjoin the wine-making building.*

Maryland wines in those early days did not have the best reputation, especially compared to their California cousins. “That was true. There was no good wine in Maryland,” Fred notes. But things have improved with the collective expertise and enthusiasm of his fellow wine-growers in the state, he says. Elk Run has garnered numerous national and international prizes and distinctions.

Elk Run Winery is unique in the state in growing vinefera grapes, which are the varieties from Europe, in his vineyard that now encompasses 25 acres. It has Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Gris for white and Merlot, Pinot Noir and Syrah, among others, for red. Fred makes port, sweet dessert wines, and rose in addition to sparkling wine, chardonnay and pinot noir.

They made a hit at the first Maryland Wine Festival in 1989. In 2017, Elk Run earned 14 medals in the MidAtlantic Seasonal competition, including four gold medals.

As well-versed in fine wine as he is, don’t expect the stereotype of the wine connoisseur. Fred is as down to earth as the big Golden Retriever curling up at his feet in Elk Run’s wine-tasting room, where we settle to talk at a round table in a cozy room with well-worn Victorian furniture.

“We just got into wine and made trips up to New York and worked on the farm of Konstantine Frank in the Fingerlakes region of upstate New York. I helped out during harvest and during processing,” explains Fred.

Frank was credited with helping to start several wine businesses in Virginia. He served as mentor and advisor to Fred and Carol when they first started to grow grapes.

The couple found a house dating back to 1756 with two acres featuring soil of schist and shale, good for the drainage and deep roots needed for wine grapes, and elevations that protected the plants from frost. Appropriately, the handsome brick house had been a tavern, located along the old coach road from Pittsburgh to Frederick.

“The house was in good shape; it had bathrooms and heat,” notes Fred, with characteristic understatement. And it was within commuting distance of Fred’s job with the U.S.Navy in Silver Spring, Maryland

Sustainable vineyard

Elk Run uses sustainable methods of farming but cannot go entirely organic due to the hazards of humidity and too much rain which can cause black rot and diseased grapes. “We will use organic fertilizers as long as they work. But if it is too rainy those don’t work as well,” says Fred. They are careful and do not pick grapes until after the period that the toxins have biodegraded.

Very good years and bad years

The years have been up and down at the winery.

“I’m learning something new every year,” Fred says. There is a constant balancing act with the weather. He recalls 2007 as one of Elk Run’s best years and 2018 with drenching rains as one of the worst. 2022 was “pretty dry” so the wines will be good.

However, the last four years have taken a personal toll. Carol passed away from cancer, as did their child Katherine. The popular dessert wine Sweet Katharine is named for his daughter. Then Covid dried up the steady stream of visitors who have been the backbone of Elk Run’s business.

“We’re slowly getting back into the flow of things,” Fred says. “More people coming; more social media.”

Wine tasting

It’s a friendly fun place. When I was there, a couple arrived from Baltimore at 11 a.m. with lunch bags in hand. They ordered a charcuterie board and a sample tray of three small bottles. “This is our tenth or fifteenth time here. They know us here. I love the atmosphere, the dog, the wine. . .” says Maya Jackson Presley. With the help of Julian who works with marketing, Elk Run has planned events designed to draw from Baltimore, Washington and beyond.

Of all these aspects of wine production, what is the best part ? I ask Fred. He replies, “Drinking it.”

Elk Run is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Most of the sales take place at the winery, but Breakthrough Beverage distributes it to fine wine shops in Maryland and DC. It is also available online. Sipping Saturdays and Sundays begin in May with free music and food trucks, 2-5 p.m. when you can sit outside on picnic tables scattered in a field adjoining the vineyard. A jazz weekend is planned for Father’s Day, June 18.

Fun facts about those bubbles

*Bubbles are caused by the interaction of yeast and sugar added to the base wine. The yeast eats the sugar and releases carbon dioxide. When the cork is removed, the CO2 is released as bubbles.

*The bubbles in the original concoction were considered an accident.

*Dom Perignon, the monk who was credited with discovering champagne, originally was charged with getting rid of the bubbles in champagne. The bubbles were causing explosions in the cellar. Workers were having to wear masks to prevent injury from the bursting bottles.

*Now every bottle of good champagne must have bubbles, millions of them. There are approximately 49 million bubbles in a standard sized bottle of champagne.

* You get more bubbles if you hold the glass at an angle while you fill it.

*For every carbon dioxide molecule that turns into a bubble in a glass of champagne, four others escape into the air.
–compiled from https://glassofbubbly.com/champagne-facts-about-bubbles/

water bubbles — Photo by Sebastian Sørensen on Pexels.com

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I am taking a break to celebrate the end of a year with Jojo, with thanks to my friend Cynthia and others along the way who have been understanding when she has runaway or eaten their shoes. It was not clear when I first picked up Jojo last year that she would be the domesticated sort. She is definitely a country dog who can run circles around me and others in her path.

March 20, 2023March 22, 2023gotofarms 6 Comments

Cynthia , Jojo and me celebrating birthdays March 20

Jojo, originally named Joyce, was skittish, afraid of her own shadow and me, at every step.

I enlisted Cynthia to help me pick her up at the designated place somewhere in suburban Maryland, where the Canine Humane Network had arranged for people to claim.

Howling in trauma, these 30 homeless dogs had arrived from Texas via transfer truck that night.

During Covid, after the death from cancer of my sweet gentle Hali, I had been scouring BARCs, Petfinder, SPCAs from Baltimore to southern Virginia, everywhere, for a dog to keep me company. Hali was a faithful, low maintenance English shepherd of unknown origins and stayed in my room, discreetly by the doorway. Everyone was applying for dogs then. It was only after appealing with my sob story about losing Hali, that somehow, someone on the application’s other end, saw that I could be a responsible dog-owner.

I had borrowed a crate from a friend but didn’t even know how to open and lock it. Cynthia knew. She was once a pet columnist for a magazine. And I anointed her as Jojo’s godmother.

Jojo was waiting inside a house taken over by the dog rescuers. She was stunning. She had a classic bird dog confirmation with unusual black and white markings, smeared as if someone had sprinkled them over her and then rubbed the spots in. She had a wild look in her brown eyes, the color of a woodland stream.

I brought along some treats to offer her to make friends. But she was scared and dodged them. Friendship seemed a long way off. Cynthia, who is now an acupuncturist,then stepped in with the magic touch. She must have found my dog/s pressure points; pretty soon Joyce was nuzzling her hand. Cynthia handed over the leash to me. I held it firm and reached out to pet Joyce, but she cowered, as if I were going to hit her. I started to walk, all she wanted to do was lunge in the opposite direction.

*Meeting Jojo for the first time with volunteer from Canine Humane Network in Highland, MD*

I had brought my old expandable leash, but the good rescuers promptly dismissed it in favor of a leash that they had on hand, along with a goody bag full of coupons, food and birth papers.

After I attached the lead, Joyce scampered out in the direction of a shopping center. I held firm and called out to her but she did not know her name or me. That was when I knew I could change her name–to Jojo. She just wanted to get away, some place she once called home. Instead of Get Back, as the Beatles sang, I implored, Get Back Here to Where You Belong.

“Hold her tight!” yelled one of the dog savers. “She is very scared.”

I thought, wait til she gets to my house, a little two-story rowhouse in urban Baltimore.

I worried whether she would ever adapt.

And I wondered, where did this terrified dog come from and what had happened to her to make her fear even my hand?

Well, the long story is she came from Australia, an Australian cattle dog. When the English settlers came to Australia they brought along their sheep dogs, which did not get along in the wide open spaces of the new adopted country. So they developed a cross between the dingo, and the sheep dog, to come up with both the Australian shepherd, that fuzzy, friendly looking dog and her cousin, the sleek, fast Australian cattle dog-herder. I can see Jojo’s herding instinct, how she will come up and nuzzle my hand, to get me to go on a walk. Plus she loves to run–and often runs away–as she has done on several occasions.

On our first trip to the country, with three of my close friends, we walked along a dirt road, lined in tall blue-berried trees mixed with blackberry bushes.

*Strolling with Jojo ended up with a run in the country*

We were enjoying the beautiful outdoors when Jojo broke away in a blur of speed, faster than a horse, or even a car. I despaired she would never come back but told my friends, let’s wait before we panic. After an hour, she came racing back to the doorstep. That was close, I thought. At least she was safe in the woods. Suppose she did that in the city!

By last summer, after 4 months, I thought she had acclimated to my home pretty well. We had been walking regularly, morning and night. I had invited some friends to dinner. After weeks of trying to find a date, they all finally committed for dinner at 5:30. So I took Jojo on a walk at 4:30, along StonyRun, one of the most scenic walks in the city, along a stream in a band of woods full of birds and greenery.We got back in time to take the chicken out of the oven–but somehow the door was left ajar for an instant. Jojo, seeing her opportunity, charged out the door. I dashed out after her, but she thought I was playing a game. Down the alley, around the corner, into Keswick Road, she plunged – where I knew she would be run over. Promptly at 5:30, she stopped traffic. My dinner guests were at the front of the stalled traffic, as a policeman–who happened to be a K-9 specialist–screeched to a halt, leaped out of his car, and tried to catch and reach out to my runaway dog.

I was waiting in the alley with a treat and her leash.. The policeman herded Jojo towards me, where I was waiting with some of her favorite treats. (Yes, herding can work both ways.) Not interested, she ran right past me. I signaled to the policeman the direction to my back door, and we herded her inside.

Meanwhile my dinner guests were marveling at the wild dog running around in the street. They apologized for being late, and laughed when they recognized Jojo. “That was YOUR dog!” Katie said as she handed me a bottle of wine.

Since then Jojo has gotten into other trouble. At dog school, she failed. She wouldn’t lie down on command. And on graduation day when at doggie play time, she just kept running around and around and wouldn’t come when called. For 15 minutes, she had the class of obeying mutts with their owners in hostage as we tried to catch her. Elizabeth, the patient dog trainer, helped to herd her into Howl, the adjoining gourmet dog store, where we cornered her amid bongs and bitable bones.

These days, instead of running away as much, her major habit is chewing up and eating anything she can find. I have a whole drawer full of socks nibbled at the toe or heel. She snarfed up three pieces of a jigsaw puzzle the family was slaving over for three days over Christmas only to discover those three critical pieces missing. She’s dined on the edge of my best Oriental rug.

I might have given up, if not for Cynthia, who is always there with a solution. She and her husband Mark have invited us to their home with a fenced-in yard in the wilds of Baltimore County that is perfect for Jojo to run around in. Her two very domestic cats are fairly welcoming, given that they are natural enemies and Jojo usually goes into her house and eats up their food. I have spent some relaxing times on Cynthia and Mark’s porch with Jojo curled up at my feet and the cats at bay in the kitchen. Yes, Jojo has learned to curl up and relax.

Today I am celebrating her first birthday, the anniversary of her arrival into my home, and Cynthia’s birthday. What a pleasure! Now when I wake up, instead of sleeping in my room, she trots up the steps and wags her tail and looks at me as if to say, It’s time to get up. She doesn’t bark except when strange people come to my door, like she snarled with bared teeth at candidate Wes Moore (now governor) who came campaigning in the neighborhood a few months ago. That was ok, we had a nice talk through the glass door.

At Common Grounds,she waited tied up to a column while I ordered my cappuccino. Lots of people came up and talked dogs as I sipped my coffee on the deck. Where did you get your dog? What is your dog’s name? Easy conversation -starters. It paved the way for a milkbone from the waitress who eyed Jojo through the window. A puppy approached with his owner,more pets and geniality.

My daughter Emma has tapped into Jojo’s intelligence. She has taught her her to spin, lie down, and shake hands. Jojo will crawl into her lap like a cockapoodle, one of those real lap dogs. But she still loves to run in the country. I will not let her loose in the city for fear she will run into a car, and not be so lucky as she was to encounter a Baltimore city policeman with a love of dogs.