Day of little surprises

I got the train back from Rosie's today. She's still ill so I've been looking after her for the last few days while her parents are away. On the way back from the station I discovered a whole bunch of full sized rasberry bushes at the bottom of Leigh Hill. I never even knew they were there but will definately go back for more. When I got home I threaded the Fairy Ring mushrooms on string and hung them up to dry in the garage. Will use them in a Risotto when Rosie's better.


Another discovery was waiting for me in the back garden where my tomatoes have produced their first tiny little fruit! It was on one of the plants affected by the mosaic virus. Rosie's plants, which never got sick, already have a number of fruits on them.


Down on the patch, my courgette plants are really getting established. They're huge now. Henry says his have alreay got fruits a few inches long.

The final surprise of my day was being sked by my local Friends of the Earth group to take over as Campaigns Officer for the Big Ask Climate Change Bill campaign. Following all the havok being wrecked by flooding in Yorkshire this week, hopefully the UK government will take this problem seriously and bring in legislation to help reduce future chaos.

Mushrooms in the Rain

I went back to check on the mushrooms today. I picked some of the Fairy Ring's making sure that they were the right ones and not the Cream Clots or Cracked Caps that they could be confused with. The big white Horse buttons still haven't broken their veil yet.

I should probably say at this point that I spent about 3 years studing wild mushrooms with field guides and online resources before I ate any, and I still stick to those that are easy to identify and hard to confuse. If you ever plan on picking mushrooms, it is adviseable to learn all the posible poisinous look-a-likes and find examples of both them, and the ones you are lookin for, in different stages of development so that you can familiarise yourself with their different features. It is also worth taking spore samples and important to note the habitat in which you find them.

Rasberries in the rain

Its been another wet weekend. Went out mushroom hunting with Rosie on Kingsley Common yesterday morning. Found a few baby field mushroom buttons which we might go back for, and lots of Fairy Ring which we didn't bother picking, although they are supposed to be good for stews so maybe we should have! What really made the trip worthwhile though, was finding a wild rasberry bush. Only a few ripe fruits but they were a taste explosion in our mouths. Mmmmm...