TastyTrixie.com

Archive for the ‘mushrooms’ Category

We got some fresh air walking in the woods on Sunday. Sometimes I don’t want to be anywhere else, just hidden in the trees kneeling at feathers dropped and listening to sudden wings beating above.

Sunlit path with fallen leaves; see Delia?

Maybe it’s because we fail to get outside as often as we can and should that I feel like spending seven whole days outside savoring every amazing detail to be had, smelling EVERYTHING, sometimes (most times?) on my hands and knees.

Fallen chunk of bird wing

And then coming home to a hot bath followed by thick soup under thick blankets with a thick book. And then black black sleep.

If I were smarter, this photo of Delia would be EVEN COOLER!

Last month we took a walk in these woods and saw more mushrooms than I’ve ever seen in my life, like a nightmare amount and variety. More than we’ve ever seen in these exact woods in the past eight years. I regret not going back with the camera for a very very slow and deliberate walk to collect their images. They’re almost all gone now. And I wish we had the right glass for taking close-ups.

Round white mushrooms with delicate fringe.

I imagined I could spend the whole entire winter learning to draw by drawing mushrooms using this collection (I failed to get) of photos as a reference. Because the only hope for me to ever draw anything is to try to learn to draw ONE THING in as many different forms as I’ve ever seen it naturally and only after taking fifteen years to master that, branch out into the realm of the imaginary mushroom.

Slender stalk with mushroom bark over cedar fronds

I can’t imagine ever being bored. Even if my “masterpiece” at the end of it all wound up being a scary grove of cartoon mushrooms painted on black velvet. With a big foul curved pecker in the middle of it all. See? see? SEE HOW THEY LOOK ALIKE???

On my birthday (Saint Patrick’s Day) we went for a walk in the woods with our dog. We’ve gotten more rain in the past week than we normally do in our Western Washington “banana belt” location, so the moss and everything seemed a brighter green edging the path.

One of my favorite things about being in the woods with Delia is the way she will point out pretty things, first using their common names and then (if I’m lucky) their Latin names. Was it a flowering quince she pointed out? I can’t remember what it was, only that it had pink buds and the water was behind Delia when she said it. I can hear the sound of the comma between the English and the Latin, even if I can’t remember the words.

As we wandered off the beaten path, Delia notified me that she found a morel:

For the rest of our walk she kept her eyes peeled for more while I just grinned feeling that fortune had smiled upon us. On me, especially.

Today she fried it up in butter and soy sauce and we shared that one small, delicious mushroom. It was better than a birthday cake. The kiss afterwards was salty and slick with grease.