Sunday forage

Bean and I had a great two hour forage in the middle of the day - walked about 3 miles round and about the wood over the back, Holtwood. There were plenty of fungi around, this is what we found, brought back for ID-ing, but plenty left in situ. On the plate, there's amethyst deceiver (the most beautiful colour), what I think is a deceiver, funnel caps (bit scary, not sure if they are the deadly ones), some I thought were coconut milkcaps, but no milk comes out of the gills when cut, and the alrge one which is definitely one of the milkcaps, but I'm not sure which one.

This is a picture of our new foraging machine - Harriet the Chariot! :) I got a couple of these wheelie baskets at the tip on Friday for one pound each, great bargain. We filled her with a big bag of brambles, good handfuls of apples (cultivated and wild), big bunch of yarrow, all filled around with plenty of sticks for drying for the fire. A great asset to our foraging, but got stuck in the boggy muddy bits a couple of times.....:) The third pic is of the brambles and apples simmering on the stove a short while later; plenty of brambles, the rest are in the fridge to turn into a couple of jars of jam on the morrow. Highlight of the trip was seeing two young roe deer; I heard a rustling in the trees beside us, stood still, motioned to Bean to do the same, and we were rewarded by the glorious sight of them bounding across the clearing, some 20 feet in front of us. A sight never to be forgotten, and all this a few hundred yards from our back garden. As I said before, we are so lucky to live here, and to be able to take advantage of all it has to offer.