Traveling Chariot

The Indigo Milky , lactarius indigo , was a lovely wild find this summer. A forest peppered with blue mushrooms is magical indeed. With no look-alikes in Missouri, I was confident in my identification and so ate these wild edibles in many ways. I friend them in batter of egg and flour, sautéed them in butter, and sautéed them into scrambled eggs. If the indigos are fresh they should turn your eggs GREEN! like Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs & Ham. My green eggs looked more grey than green but were tasty nonetheless. I like them fried best; they reminded me of fried Portobellos. These are really beautiful mushrooms with rings on top and gills below that will bleed blue. I found many of these in late June and early July, however, after an inch of rain and some cooler weather, I found another just this morning with many chanterelles popping up again too!

The cool, misty, windy days of Edinburgh in late March were the best sort of days to amble through grey, stoney cemeteries and forgotten underground vaults. Greyfriar's Kirkyard (kirk is Scots Gaelic for church) is an ancient graveyard surrounding Greyfriar's Kirk, named for a Franciscan order of monks established in the 16th century. The kirkyard is walled in and not terribly large but it is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in Edinburgh. I have seen many a ghost hunter show visit this shadowy place. I, however, enjoyed walking around the fascinating graveyard with so many little vaults and mausoleums, sculptures and macabre reliefs of skulls and such. I myself felt no tug on my coat tails, no ominous chill, no sense of dread. It was a quiet, and actually beautiful, little pocket of the town near Grassmarket. Later that evening we met a guide from Mercat Tours to lead us into the once forgotten Blaire Street Underground Vaults of  Edinburgh. Below y

It came by post in a gold padded envelope. I opened it carefully with much anticipation. Within, little bits of magic were each wrapped in their own special attire. I had purchased the Lip Balm Gift Set , Evergreen Mountain Solid Perfume Locket , and the Locket Refill Fireside Story  from For Strange Women (via Etsy). I slowly undressed each little treasure.                    The lip balms (clove, pine cone, rosewood & poison ivy) came nestled in a bed of moss. Clove and Pine Cone are my favorites. These lip balms smell wonderful, feel great on, and are lightly sweetened with stevia.  The Evergreen Locket also slept in a bed of mouse in its letterpress box. It is a beautiful locket and the scent is, well, strange. Oh the best sort of strange, woodsy, dark, damp, yet sweet, and changes subtly once on. Often I can smell the woods while wearing the locket, without applying the perfume, which is nice because the scent is really just for me. It is adorned with a caboch

[PLEASE NOTE: Anything here I've attempted to identify is an educated guess but by no means fact. I'm no expert] Bolete Mushrooms are the giants of the mycological realm, lurking in the damp woods but not at all hidden because they are, well, giant most of the time. It was Boletes that shocked me a few summers ago with their enormity - mushrooms bigger than dinner plates, some near a foot tall. I like to call the pale ones pancake mushrooms because they look and feel like pancakes to me. The great edible Porcini mushroom is a bolete but sadly doesn't grow in Missouri.  This summer I have seen a great many boletes though not as giant as I have in the past. They are incredibly fun to spot - even a small bolete is a giant among the other modest mushrooms of the woods. Many are very dense and sturdy, too, which helps them last many days longer than other mushrooms. What makes a bolete unique, and a good way to identify a bolete, is it's underbelly: beneath that cap

This is my great Aunt Alta (Altie) Maples harvesting apples in her youth. I love the composition of this old photo, the sun in the eyes squint, all those bushels of apples. (Is that a thermos of cider on the top rung of the ladder?) Photo is circa 1920.

               There is a little road that goes by one of the last remaining orchards in my area. From here I parked my car and gingerly crept into the edge of the orchard not to steal any fruit, just to steal a photo or 20. Sadly all the others have faded and closed over the year, their trees in rows becoming twisted but still stubbornly creating fruit. I have long found orchards to be magical places. Perhaps it is because apples play such a part in wonder tales of our youth as disguises for poison and spells or vessels of magic and knowledge. Or perhaps they are magical spaces because many of my most favorite childhood memories are of driving down old forgotten roads to an old forgotten orchard ran by an old man and woman who sold the best apples and pressed cider. But, too, my family is from a tiny town that was once peppered with orchards, relatives once worked seasonally to harvest the ruby ripe apples, or else nicked one on the way home from school. Perhaps it is in my apple r

A Storefront window for these days which feel like summer one day and Autumn the other, while fruits are ripening and kids are returning to school. This one was for Aurora Pet Salon.

These beautiful fragrant Chanterelles have been popping up most of the summer, in fact, they are in season from May to October! Right now they are taking a break because of the heat but each new rain, I go a-searching once again. These have become one of my favorite mushrooms because they are edible, very delicious, easy to identify, and most of all they are easy to find! While morels hide in the shadows like elusive mythical creatures, chanterelles can be seen across a leaf strewn woodland, a little pop of yellow or orange that shouts "Here I am!" They also seem to grow in groups so, where there is one, there are likely more very near. Most of the chanterelles in my forest are Smooth Chanterelles, meaning they lack the ridges underneath. But I've also seen the classic Chanterelle as well as the little red Cinnabar Chanterelle. I've cooked them in many different ways: sautéed, mushroom soup, fried, oven roasted. They were all great! Read more about them here .

young Northern Fence Lizard

I have seen many brilliant skies this summer: sunsets & sunrises, full moons & blue moons, mist & fog. These past few evenings I laid out to view the star show of the Perseid Meteor Shower which was nothing short of a marvel. I witnessed countless (but probably 20 to 30 a night) shooting stars (meteors from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle). Of those I saw there were a handful that elicited gasps of wonder and excitement, streaks of light that traveled the length of the sky, stars with tails of matter burning up and igniting wonderment within me. Of course, I got no photos of these magical moments but they'll be forever etched in my mind's eye. Hope you caught some of the magic, too.

[Mushroom Monday - better late than never] These little beauties are Scarlet Waxy Cap mushrooms. They are quite frequent in my forest and are positively fairytale-esque. They have a very shiny (waxy) look to them and begin as tiny red specks on the forest floor. I love seeing such vibrant colors in nature and these are gems in the sunlight. This is a waxy cap nearing the end of its life. They really glow in the sunlight.