False Alarm

We thought for a while that we’d been rather clever. This is a great year for mushrooms: the woods, where Miss Dog is walked when we have time, are full of them. There are some highly suspicious shiny lipstick red ones, varnished looking yellow ones, brown ones of all shapes and sizes, and a whole range of whitish grey excrescences on old treetrunks. We were inclined to admire the display in general, but were also rather pleased to see a lot of little egg-yolk yellow chaps poking up through the moss. Chanterelles are very nice, so we filled our pockets and took them home. Alas, investigation via Google suggested that they might be the false chanterelle, not the edible kind, so we chucked them, on the better safe than sorry principle – the other day the Professor met a couple of Poles in the wood who were happily collecting all sorts of fungi, but really, I think you have to be brought up to it. By the way, it’s been a funny year for plant life more generally; rather moist with low light levels, which has benefited some things while disadvantaging others. My geraniums haven’t been very good at all and the roses have been terrible, but the begonias are twice their normal size. When they eventually die down I think they’ll be leaving corms the size of saucers. All the better for next year.