Comfort

 I wonder if all the lovely people who left such kind messages and sent sweet emails about our dear little Mouse will ever know just what a blessing they were, in a very dark time? Thank you hardly seems adequate, but - thank you from the bottom of my heart. Being recently moved to a strange area, there were no 'real life' friends to turn to, so every word was balm and helped me feel a little less lonely.

Although our new, temporary home isn't handy for immediate foot wandering - a busy country road runs along the edge of the barn, and it shakes when lorries and tractors thunder by - we drive out as often as we can, to get a sense of place and familiarise ourselves with the area. 

I have always found woods to be especially soothing - the mere whiff of damp leaf mould does more for me than a scented candle. And there are always treasures to find - coral fungus, baby frogs and strange stumps littering the forest floor.

A close look reveals a tiny bracken frond emerging from the old, rotting roots of the mother place. 

With all the wet weather, fungi and toadstools are already emerging. These woods are mostly conifers, making the woods acidic; perfect for stink horns. There were dozens of them in the first 'egg' form, strangely metallic and translucent.

 

 Stink horns are one of my favourite fungi, despite their smell and if you don't know what they look like after the egg stage, I dedicated an entire blog post to them once. 

 

But if you prefer the larger things in life, then on the edge of the woods there is a vast view of Shropshire from Oliver's Point.

Driving out towards the border and views across to the beautiful  Berwyn Mountains in nearby Wales.

While mourning my favourite cat,  I have conquered my 'painting block' which has lasted for about two years. This is another comfort.  The familiarity of painting has always soothed me. And tomorrow, Tuesday,  we go to look at a very promising cottage - unless there is something really wrong with it, or someone else snaffles it, we are daring to hope. 

Stink Horn

Should you find me quietly nestling in dark, dank woodland corners -




Be kind. Call me Dragon's Egg.




Call me Witches Ball.




Call me Goblin's Crystal.





But please - don't call me Stinkhorn. Even if you smell my older brother...






(edited note - the 'egg' is the primary stage of the common Stink Horn - as you can see, it starts as an amazing globe, about as large as a big hen's egg, and erupts into the fairy tail castle of the 'older brother', shown here in its later stage as it begins to disintegrate. You often find flies and insects clustered round them, as they have a rank, sour odour - in fact, you will probably smell one before you see it. I actually rather like it, but others find it noisesome in the extreme). allus Impudicus - StinkIhorpE

Fungus parade

DISCLAIMER. The following post is a personal recollection and is not intended to be a definitive guide to edible mushrooms. Get a decent book instead.

It seems to have been a great year for toadstools and fungi. I've been an amateur mycologist since I was small. I was about 8 years old when I was bought - at my own precocious request - my first identification book; the Octopus guide by Dr Miro Svrcek, which still comes out with me now. A couple of years later, I was allowed to go exploring the countryside on my own. (Thanks mum, that must have been so hard for you to let me go, and I really appreciate it now). Kitted up with my green khaki rucksack, some sweets, sandwiches, thermos, compass, and my Mushrooom book, I tramped the lanes and woods of the Dawlish countryside in search of edible fungi and adventure. So long as I could show my anxious mother that I had identified whatever it was correctly, I was allowed to eat it, cooked by myself in a frying pan with a little butter. I made myself very ill once with a dodgy puffball, not really believing that they were inedible if the inner flesh was not completely white...but that was the only time. Nowadays I'm just as happy collecting photos, (although finding a good crop of edibles is always a bonus). We've found some real stunners this year, like this beautiful cup fungus, seen from the side and from above, with its pool of rainwater, looking for all the world like a fairy pool.

And of course, fly agarics are always lovely to look at...

Sadly we missed the puffball season. Instead, the woodland floor threw up sprawling colonies of Earth Balls, alien looking and hard to the touch when young.

In the coniferous part of the woods, where the towering pine trees make a dense, dark cover, there was an abundant crop of Stink Horns, whose Latin name is aptly 'Phallus Impudicus'. These start off as 'eggs' - in fact, in the Black Forest of Germany, they are called 'Witches' Eggs' or 'Devils Eggs' and are eaten when unexpanded. The mucus layer is slipped off and the ball inside is reputed to have a 'pleasant earthy taste'. So says my old Shell Country Book...but I think I'll stick with just taking pictures...from egg to old age.

The Shell book also says that; "if you take an 'egg' home and leave it on a damp cloth, a stinkhorn will sooner or later emerge, almost suddenly. But it will not make you popular".

Now this pale and creepy chap is a new one to me. It's the False Death Cap. It's stumpier than a real Death Cap and has a velvety sheath splitting over a delicate lemon underskin. The real tester is the smell, which is of fresh raw potato. Actual Death Caps should Never Be Handled. In fact, I used a leaf to move this one, as I would do with any toadstool I was unsure of or believed to be poisonous.

This is a particularly fine type of bracket fungus, and its exquisite lacing of gills, well worth crawling underneath to see.

This tough character is the Birch Polypore - also known as the 'Razor Strop', as it used to be dried and used for sharpening razors.

Finally...an example of how you must be so careful when identifying even the seemingly innocuous. It's simple enough to identify a Parasol mushroom, (Lepiota Procera) although there is also the Stinking Parasol, (Lepiota Cristata) which has a smell 'like tar', looks a bit stouter than its tall elegant cousin and is definitely to be avoided. I've never found one of these, but I always have a cautious sniff of whatever we're picking, as smell can be a good pointer as to what is what. So - the common Parasol, as gathered by Andy...

...and these plainer fellows, picked by me yesterday. They look very much like Parasols, but not the shaggy or common ones. In fact, they look a little like the photos of the stinking variety.

This is when I sit down with several books and the internet and do lots of cross referencing. The smell is a nice mushroom aroma, not at all tarry, and I know we've eaten this kind before. But I want to be certain. At last I discover that it is lesser known type, 'Lepiota Excoriata' and it is edible. Good. Because I've waffled on about fungus for a long time now, and it is way past the breakfast hour. Fried, I think, in a little butter. Just as I've always done.