In the Garden

As we have the run of the place this weekend Fizz has been showing me around her estate.

This garden is on the opposite side of the house to my flat and I don't come here often. This is a lovely thick mossy lawn that you sink into and leave footprints.

It is mown regularly with one of those drive on lawn mowers but there is a thick bed of moss under the grass. It is full of mushrooms.

Thank you for showing me this Fizz. This is a really nice piece of grass.

I expect that we will be having a look at some of these mushrooms in more detail over the next few days.

I am going to start with this one.

This is called a Parrot Waxcap, Hygrocybe psittacina. It is one of the easiest Waxcaps to identify.

Well it is parrot coloured.

Most Waxcaps are edible but nothing special. They don't taste particularly good and many of the species are quite rare, for this reason it is generally frowned on to forage for Waxcaps. They are often slimy as well, so a bit off putting. There is no good reason to eat this one.

However the Parrot Waxcap is one of the more common ones and so I am going to cut a couple open and have a proper look at them.

Those colours are real by the way. It is a beautiful little fungi that could almost certainly learn to repeat things that you said to it, given time. Unfortunately the fruits don't last long enough to learn things like that.

These Waxcaps are regarded as an indicator of grassland quality. I have heard that they can only appear on grassland that has been maintained and unimproved (unfertilised) for at least thirty years. Natural grassland. So Fizz's grass is good grass.

As to what they are doing here, it was long believed that they were saprobic on grass roots but the thinking these days is that they have a mutually beneficial relationship with mosses. That would make good sense this is very mossy grass.

There is more fungi to come if I can just figure out what it is :)

Primroses

This is just a quick Easy Wildflowers update. I wrote about primroses this morning and I thought that I should share a few images with you.

I don't expect people to read that blog. It is intended as a reference work to accompany this blog and I plan to have it populated with a decent range of common flowers by next spring. You are not going to need it before then :)

The posts that I put there are actually pages. They won't appear in your Reader even if you have followed that blog (sorry) for now I am using pages because they have a hierarchy that I may use to link different plant families and create a sort of taxonomy (I am not sure how that will work yet). My reservation about using pages is that I can't put Tags/labels on them so they might be harder for search engines to find but my experience of search engines is that they pick up titles quicker than labels.

Pretty flowers.

The pin.

The Thrum

If you don't know about pins  and thrumbs then you have to read the article but it is only really there for people who can't recognise Primroses.

The Primrose, Primula vulgaris

Anyway I told you that we would have flowers in the winter.

Today I have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. There is a Fox in the Hen house and I have been left on my own to look after an over sexed Dog who keeps trying to escape and misbehave. I have got to get a CCTV system up and running and..... wait a minute.... maybe I can use the CCTV to keep an eye out for canine intruders.

:)

I am not supposed to let the sheep roll on their backs or they will be unable to right themselves and they will explode (that is what I was told) Video camera at the ready for that one. No! kindness shall prevail.

Winter is coming

Heh heh :) But it is not here yet.

I would love to have a cold winter. Hard frosts and clear blue skies, blizzards and deep snow. Fizz and I have never played snow balls or made snow angels or built a snow dog. That would all make for some memorable photographs.

I think that we are going to get mud. That's what we had last year. Grey skies, rain and floods and mud on mud. It's not so good.

It's sunshine Fizz. You remember sunshine don't you?

It's warm and it makes you feel sleepy.

She can have a little cat-nap while I photograph some berries.

These are Sloe Berries, the fruit of the Blackthorn. They are traditionally used to flavour Sloe Gin but I like to eat them straight of the tree.

They do have a large pip but also a lot of flesh and they are very juicy. The have an astringent quality, they leave your mouth feeling dry and puckered, the only cure for this is to eat another one.

A lot of people find them too tart and they are just a nibble for me, I have never sat down and ate a bowlful. The flavour is supposed to sweeten after the first frosts but I can never wait and I have been eating them since the end of August.

This has been a very good year for Sloe berries.

Wakey wakey :)

Come on we have got sunshine to see.

It is nice out but recent rains have left the tracks a bit muddy. I suppose that it is time to get the old Wellies out of storage.

We shall look back and laugh at this soon.

Looking back at old photo's I think that perhaps this year I should invest in waders or a full body wet suit. In this next picture she thinks that I am drowning and is trying to administer the kiss of life.

Come on it is not that wet yet. Well, not for me anyway :)

Our next berry is Black Bryony. This one is deadly poisonous of the painful blistering variety, you wouldn't eat one. Now that leaves are falling from the trees this is becoming more evident as it scrambles about in the hedgerow.

You might want to clean yourself up a bit, I can't really take you home like that.

Good Girl.