I know this plant as bedstraw, but without much confidence in that ID. A quick google suggests I’m right; there are a bunch of bedstraws, however, and I don’t know which this is. The genus is Galium, which this web site says is Greek for “milk”, and sometime in history the juice of the plant was used to curdle milk. Yum.
Just finished Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero (2007)*. Recommended. Some of his descriptions of the countryside struck me viscerally as do those of Cormac McCarthy. Somewhat tortured characters are also similar. Many are orphaned young. Ondaatje’s stories are entirely different from McCarthy’s, however.
* I didn’t read The English Patient (1993) or see the movie (1996), so I can’t make any comparisons.
Household victory: 2007 taxes completed, signed, mailed today.