First cucumber! Chillis are looking great. Various leaves are thriving. Purple flowers grow up the side of the bromeliad, working their way towards the top.
Plus: mushroom update... chopped up my spent straw substrate and mixed it with grain, into new bags, which are being re-incubated.
K and I went to an open garden and plant sale in Falkland. It mostly poured down, so we marched around in raincoats and wellies, before retreating to Pillars of Hercules for coffee and cake. We did manage to buy some plants though.
Back to the Dryad's' Fountain for another go at the ones that have grown. Also found more fountains. Some were pretty high, but with the ingenious invention of a knife tied to a stick with a dogpoo bag, we managed to get some. The ones I couldn't catch (most of them) crashed to the ground in a mushroom apocalypse.
We also packed the dryer with oyster mushrooms.
Back to the oyster woods for another evening of harvesting an unseemly quantity of oyster mushrooms. Stayed up late again processing them. Again.
Not long before mushroom porridge made an appearance. Made huge amounts of mushroom soup, too, and bottled a lot of it. Mushroom stir fries, mushroom pasta. Mushrooms in sandwiches and mushrooms in pies. Eventually gave up and just boiled and bottled the rest.
Chocolate cakes for Community Kitchen. Berry compote swirl cake for me (and friends).
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Back again to the oyster woods. This is getting out of hand. Bottled loads to preserve for stock and cooking with in future. Filled the dryer over again.
Also went to check on the chicken of the woods in Ravenscraig, doesn't seem to be growing.
First vandalism of my garden yesterday. Someone tried to yank off some rhubarb. They failed, but partly detached the stem and wrecked the leaf.
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Nasturtiums are flowering. Wow they're bright!
Damage to the rhubarb.
Chillis are looking amazing.
Some of the oyster mushrooms are just breathtakingly beautiful little things. Makes you just want to pickle 'em. (We did.) Also got more dryad's saddle!
Several varieties of mushroom pate, with sunflower seeds as the base/binder.
Attempted sticky bbq mushrooms andn a mushroom pizza of course. Mushroom burgers with homemade bread and homegrown salad. More mushroom porridge and pastas.
Compote muffins; cake for Community Kitchen.
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A bus trip for a foray in some woods near Aberdour. The chanterelles are up, but we're a bit early and only got a handful. Also found an aging chicken of the woods! Saw my first stinkhorn, and plenty of others that I don't know (yet).
Aberdour castle and cemetery.
I shaved my head again last week and now all I see when I see my shadow is:
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In reply to: https://rhiaro.co.uk/2021/07/shaved-head-again
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Back to Aberdour woods for more chanterelles, but they hadn't grown much. We think not enough rain. Also found interesting boletes and other things.
Dysart beaches and a couple of pics from an Aberdour foray.
Tomatoes and cucumbers are developing. Picked a radish and a banana chilli and broccoli.
Extended the footpath garden with a new planter made of old wood and washed up fishing crates..
Mixed mushroom stirfry, mushroom tempura, mushroom scramble, mushroom chilli in wraps, mushroom bolognese with penne. A courgette choc chip cake, plus lemon drizzle for Community Kitchen.
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Found some beautiful yew in R's shed. Sanded it down, treated it, filled borer holes, and oiled it about six times over the course of a couple of weeks.
Bought, by accident, unfinished steel brackets off ebay. So I had to spraypaint them black.
Finally it all came together into bathroom shelves. Which Dave promptly covered with all of his mysterious potions.
That one time I managed to get out on the kayak. I retrieved a ball that a dog couldn't get. Photos by Dave, most of them from his own kayak adventure down to Wemyss.
Dad returned, and started dismantling the ensuite with a hammer. The shower fitting is nonstandard, the sink waste runs uphill, and the stepladder went through a rotten bit of floorboard. But the shower wall we wanted to remove came out just fine, and most of the material from it was fit to be repurposed to re-enclose the upstairs pipes that needed to be boxed in again.
Beets, turnips, and the mega radish (pulled out to dry for seed pods, now it has taken over the entire polytunnel).
Emerging new oyster mushrooms from remixed substrate.
The oyster mushrooms are growing fast. Many of them, but they're a bit of a funny shape.
A couple of nights camping in the Cairngorms. It was one of the hottest weekends of the year, which is a good time to go to the Highlands, but the midges were out and they were hungry.
We had a late afternoon start, so the first night we ended up pitching the tent a bit after dark which was not ideal. After several hours walking, we found a good camping spot where the paths forked by a stream under shade of some trees in the early afternoon, and left the tent there. After the sun had peaked, we climbed Beinn a'Bhuird and looked for smoky quartz crystals. On the way back to the tent we took a "shortcut" which led to a fight through undergrowth taller than me.
The next day we skirted around the base of Beinn a'Bhuird, enjoying the landscape and flora, then packed up and walked back more or less the way we came. On the way we found a beautiful stream for a swim. Max made it his mission to grab every single rock and take them out of the riverbed.
Chips in the evening from Blairgowrie, which has been promoted to my new favourite Perthsire village (Dunkeld & Birnam is down to number 2). The chippy has a full vegan menu! And it has the tallest hedge in the world!
A wee Perthshire (and thereabouts) adventure. Water from Scotlandwell, a deep and clear natural spring. A wander around the shore of Loch Leven, which was too full of blue algae for swimming. Walk through wild orchards in Perth, along the river, through the heather gardens, over to the island. Found some boletes, possibly lurid or scarletina, but they were too old.
I've never been to Perth before. On a hot sunny day, with the river-beaches and beautiful treeline, it really felt like one of several eastern european cities. I didn't actually go into the city center though.
Homemade sushi. Courgette choc chip cake for Community Kitchen and blackcurrent cake and muffins for home. Mushroom stew. Spanish omelettes (with mushrooms), Foragers' pie (Shepherd's pie but with mushrooms), mushrooms on toast...
Boletes in the Cairngorms and in Perth. Started learning some specifics - slippery jack, larch bolete, orange/brown birch, scarletina, lurid...
After a few more days, they're big enough to eat. Some of them are leggy.. I think not enough air circulation?
Look at the bromeliad flowers!!!
This week's mushroom of the week is russulas! It's a 50-50 chance whether they're tasty or bitter. To find out, nibble the edge and wait a minute or two to see if it goes hot and peppery on your tongue. The good ones don't. Spit it out either way - don't swallow raw wild mushrooms. If you get a good one, it's worse than a 50-50 chance if it's already been eaten to distruction by something else - slugs, deer, flies, everything loves them. But if you get a good one - they're delicious! Full of deep flavours. Fry them up on toast with minimal seasoning. And they come in all kinds of lovely colours. We got a great boxfull from the edge of the oyster woods.
And more oysters, of course.
Cucumber, carrots and broccoli from my footpath garden. Banana chillis from the polytunnel. Shitloads of rhubarb; other root veg and courgettes from the garden.
