THE FIRST OF THIS YEAR'S FUNGI POSTS

I've been in a quandary where to start and have decided to start with the best - pink pearls. It's been very windy recently. It still is. Windy and rainy with sudden and torrential buckets-tipping-from-the-sky downpours so there are lots of branches on the paths. It used to be that trees fell down when it was windy like this but weak ones have been felled over the last few years and iffy branches lopped. In some places, the land now seems bare but little trees have been planted to fill some of the gaps and the skyline will turn green again one day.

I don't usually suggest

.people click the picture - but in this case - well do!

Meanwhile the wind must take something and it's tugging down bush sized branches with lots of twigs sticking out, and long, thin, straight branches too. It was on one of these that I found the pearls. They weren't there three days ago. I photographed them yesterday. They will be changed or gone by tomorrow. I'd been walking along with Ming (Esther's husband) the day before, when we came across one of these long, thin branches. It was about fifteen feet long and barely more than an inch thick - and lying across the path so Ming picked it up (of course he did, it's what males do) swung it around a bit and tossed it to the side. Just as he let it go, I saw a pink toadstool right by his fingers. I jumped around a bit, exhorting him to wipe his hand on his trousers and not to put his fingers near his mouth. Toadstools strike almost unlimited precaution in me. Friends have grown tired of my camera. Sometimes, I am forced to leave it at home before they will go a step. Never mind - I went back yesterday. There must be something very enticing about this particular branch / stick because it had been moved again in the meantime. But I found it. The weather is windy, the weather is wet but the weather is also warm. See how the baby nettles have already begun to cover it?

Fungi grow fast. See the little pearls? Presumably these will soon be toadstools like the one in the picture. When I say 'big' I mean no more than half an inch high. It looks even smaller and flatter because of the angle but I try not to move anything when I photograph. Hardly ever will I even brush a blade of grass away from the lens. You get it how it is or you don't get it at all. And I'm counting us lucky that we are seeing it. If it weren't for the wind, the branch with its little pink toadstool and pearls would still be stuck high in a tree and while I may clamber up banks or paddle in ditches for the sake of this blog . . . I haven't gone tree climbing yet. I'll go back though. Not till Monday at the earliest. But I will go back. And if I can find it despite growing nettles and men and boys who can't pass such a light, long branch without waving it around - we'll see what happens to pink pearls when left in the woods to grow. There's another problem. Shortly before I arrived at the branch I'd passed a woman with an elderly border collie going in the other direction. Shortly after I'd left it I heard her shout 'Put it down!'. Her dog (a very nice looking one) had run back to see what I'd been looking at, clearly wondering if it would be of similar interest to him. Clearly it was. Clearly he doesn't share my compunction over disturbing evidence. Clearly he does, nevertheless, have a good eye for sticks. Keep your fingers crossed.

* * * * *

P.S. There are lots more fungi to come in the next few posts. P.P.S. Because I know nothing about fungi, I make up names. This one, I'm calling 'Pink Cup Fungus' but I'm wary in case that is already the proper name of a different version. Therefore, I'll call it Cuppus Pinkus Fungus. It doesn't fit the way one is supposed to name plants so that will show a.) that is isn't really its name and b.) that I don't know what I'm talking about. There's a difference between observing and informing. This is an observing blog - not a well informed one! P.P.S. Here's me waffling on - and I've found a wonderful fungi site which is, though not authoritative (it emphasises there may be miss-identifications so it should be treated with caution) is, to my mind . . . brilliant. It's called Visual Fungi. Like mine, it is area based - but not here (South Dorset). It's further east (East and West Sussex). This is good because it leaves me with a feeling I'm doing something useful after all. Different terrain. Different fungi. And if there is an overlap, that is good too because it's interesting. For those who are not familiar with the geography of England, Sussex is far enough away for the terrain to be different but near enough for the climate to be roughly similar. I'll tell you something else about it too - not only has it got a sophisticated system for finding fungi on the site (by name, month, type, location, edibility!) each time you click the title on the home page the text pops up the same but the illustrations change. I wish I knew how to do that!

I WAS PROBABLY WRONG

Last autumn, the council cut back the blackberry bushes and with them went branches from trees; not big, fat, you-could-hang-a-swing-from-them-branches but they were, none the less, large enough to be split and squashed and splayed by the machine which mashed its way relentlessly along the hedgerow.

(The council is keen to emphasise it was a contractor, not the council itself which did this - but it was the council which contracted the contractor . . . so I find it hard to separate them.)

Here we are, a year on and this post is to show what happened to some of the broken branches. Last December, I was using a mobile phone camera which I could hold up high and still and take pictures one handed. When I dropped the phone down the loo, that was then end of that and I'm using a 'proper' camera now - which is heavier . . . and needs two hands. What with a different camera and nettles and brambles, it hasn't been possible to take the latest photos from the same angle. In one case (on the oak) I'm not sure I've even re-photographed the same branch! (But I think it is and it's on the same tree so I hope it'll do.)

Another difference is the season. The ones from last year were taken 3rd - 5th December 2008. This year, I thought it would be good to include leaves so I've taken them a bit early and the presence of leaves (and clouds!) makes them darker, less dramatic. I think it's worth it though. One comes from 29th October 2009. I'm still uncertain about that tree - birch . . . alder . . . ? It's the bark which stumps me. I've included a cropped photo of the catkins on that one. When I take another, better one, I'll swap it. The rest, I took yesterday (17th November 2009) - three weeks early but already too late for elderberry leaves. The thing about elderberry is that it looks much more substantial when in leaf than it does when the branches are bare. In the summer, it's a green blob and they are barely discernable. In winter, it's thin and skeletal and hardly shows that it ever grew anything green. Viewed from even a short distance away, it does a good impression of being dead. I'd have needed to be very observant and assiduous about timing to have stood myself by the elderberry when it had leaves and branches to be seen at the same time and at a moment when the sun was shining - in the right direction!

I like elderberry; and one of the good things about it where I live is that it provides a good perch for lichen and this lichen is very rain re-active. In December, the weather can be blue-sky-crisp-cold-and-dry. In November, it's more likely to be wet and windy. That's what it is at present and the light and the lichen show it. The November pictures are darker than the December ones and the lichen in them is green instead of yellow. It's even greener when wetter and takes hardly any time to change. My guess is that wind is drying it almost as fast as rain lands.

To the trees:-

TREE WITH RED BARK

December 5th 2008

The same tree - October 24th 2009

From this point on, the layout is weird. I have tried and tried to sort it but, unless I am to devote the rest of my life . . . well, I'm giving up. I have no idea why it is in large print and why the captions won't sit neatly where I want them . . . 'spec you'll manage!

OAK Oak - 3rd December 2008

Oak - 17th November 2009

Oak - 3rd December 2008

Oak - November 17th 2009

The reproductive (!) quality of pictures from here on isn't good. I was using the new editor. The pictures above - I've managed to replace using the old editor. Will probably sort this but ANOTHER DAY! aAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

ELDER

Splayed Elder with Shoot - 3rd December 2008

.

Splayed Elder - 17th November 2009

Elderberry Whirl - 2008

Elderberry Whirl - 17th November 2009

And was I wrong? Trees can be slow movers but, so far, they don't seem to have been too troubled by the damage done to them by council's (I mean the contractor's) cutting machines. I'll keep watching. But my preliminary conclusion is that I was wrong. I didn't make jam. It's possible that birds were disturbed. I'm not a bird person and I can't tell. If I was wrong to worry - I apologise. On the other hand . . . I'm glad I've watched.

PICKING THE LEAF - (A PICTURE POST)

One of the kindest things about Autumn is the way it offers each desiduous leaf an opportunity to take centre stage.  Amongst the many, it can shine out from the crowd.

And many there are!

But your eye falls on one.

At the top of a tree.

On the ground.

In a hedgerow.

On the path.

Almost gone.

Gone.

I hope it's alright to copy a poem.  It's by Gareth Owen and can be found in 'The Works 4' (Macmillan 2005)

Wellingtons

 I love the wild wet winter days

Of rain and slushy sleet

For it's then I fetch my Welligons

I mean my rubber Gellibongs

Oh dear I mean my Webbingtons

And pull them on my feet.

My sister Jane hates rainy days

The cold makes Mary cry

But me I've got my Wellinbots

Oh dear I mean my Bellingwots

No no I mean my Weltingots

To keep me warm and dry.

But isn't it a nuisance

Isn't it a shame

That though I love you Wellibongs

I just can't say your name.

This is a p.s to the post.  We've had a message from Gareth Owen (himself!) saying he is happy for the poem to be here but he would also like you to know about his website.

This is it

GARETH OWEN : WRITER AND PERFORMER

THEY DO NOT LABOUR, NEITHER DO THEY SPIN

I was born between eras and the generations of my family are widely spread. (A chain of middle-aged mothers.) It shows in my language. There are Victorian undertones.

Not that I've picked up the habit of speaking in the repetitive imagery my parents used.  Indeed, I've shrunk from it.  But in the last few years I've got beyond smirking over their hackneyed turns of phrase, learned to set irritation aside and realise how rich with history their stock-in-hand similies were.  My mother would come into an untidy room and complain it looked as if a bomb had hit it  -  and announce a blitz to put it right.  'Rich' did I say?  Maybe I should have said 'burdened'.

My father's comparisons sprang from an even earlier time  -  when women shone with pre-raphaelite beauty, there were no cars, agricultural life impinged still on the cities and everyone had servants.  (Well, everyone who wasn't one!)  How my father expected me to be beautiful, I don't know  -  for it's not easy to be graceful when one's wardrobe consists of crimplene cast-offs and gleanings from Church jumble sales.  But he did.  My father also thought anyone who paid attention, in how ever small a way,  to personal appearance  -  was vain.  Ear-rings  . . .  ear-rings!  Only the morally depraved wore earings!  (Those and actors playing pirates.)  Mirrors  . . .  danger there!  They were useful to men when shaving but only the vain looked in them otherwise.  All in all, it was quite difficult to live up to his dreams.  Impossible, really.  Women were supposed to be effortlessly beautiful and if it didn't work quite like that, well  . . .   they ought to be.  Beauty was supposed to come automatically, along with gender.  If it didn't he was perplexed.   (Oh how he was perplexed!)  And  women have long hair.  Don't they?  Well, they are are supposed to.  It is their 'crowning glory'.

Here he comes  . . .  "You look like a sack of potatoes with a string tied round the middle', "You look like Mad Margaret," (who?) "You look as if you have been dragged through a hedge backwards", "Be careful  -  or you'll frighten the horses,".

(It's alright, folks.  I think I've turned out ok!)

And there were other things which simply had to be said whenever particular circumstances arose  . . .  "Nice weather for ducks," (rain) "Up tails all," (upon seeing ducks)  "It's an ill wind," (when anything went wrong) "Brave souls," (and this is where I've been heading). "I think of those brave souls who would venture out on a night like this," (when closing the curtains on a cold and stormy winter's evening).

I was going to call this post "Those Brave Souls" but, with it being so close to Remembrance Sunday, I thought it might be taken to mean soldiers who had died in battle  . . .  when all I'm thinking of is flowers.

I don't much like flowers.  Chicory is an exception.  I is the sprigged muslin of late summer and autumn rather than the chintz of spring blossoms and heavy density of June roses.

I'm pleased most flowers are over with for another year, and wanting to avoid bright berries  . . .  I went out to take photos of dead things  . . . . . .  to celebrate them.

We make a lot of fuss about spring and I suspect those of us who can toddle up to the Co-op to buy chocolates and daffodils in bud get more joy from it than ever did our ancestors.  For them, I think it must have been a time of desperate hope; their festivals tinged with fear.  For anyone short of seed, it must have been terrifying.  Everything eaten, nothing to sow.  Autumn is the agricultural, horitcultural, and everything cultural destination  . . .  and the bushes where the blackberries have been picked are a sign that harvest has happened.  The husks where seeds have fallen are a sigh of relief because the seeds were there to fall.  But my post about these will have to happen another day now because I was way-laid by these 'Brave Souls' still flowering  . . .  despite the onset of wind and rain  . . .

. . . beginning with the over-hopeful ones  -  like this blackberry, which has no chance that its flowers will come to fruition but there is is happily flowering in November.  I admire its stength, its ambition, its determination to grow on to the bitter end.  I think I'll take it as the symbol of the ancient mothers in my family who had their children in their forties and didn't care if they frightened the horses.

There seems to be an almost unlimited supply of dandelion-style flowers.  You're lucky this isn't a post full of ones like these  -  only with different shapes for their leaves.  I could even be drawing your attention to the variety of petal endings.  When I come home with my camera, I enlarge the photos on the computer screen and gaze into them and wonder  . . .  I mean, why are they so varied and so complicated and yet so regular.  Daft!

Ivy  -  where the noise of buzzy insects (dull brown bees and flies) will attract attention even if one were to miss the mass of flowers.  Growing up in London for a large part of my early childhood, it never struck me that ivy might have flowers.  To me it was a thin strand of fibre with an occasional, heart shape leaf limply attached, which just about managed to creep around in the dust and soot.  Sometimes, though, it formed such a huge, dense mess of dark, drab leaves, it became a sort of overwhelming blob.  A bit menacing really.  To associate Holly with Ivy at Christmas seemed an act of poetic desperation.  Couldn't they have thought of something better?  It was like making a link between brown paint and true gold.  (Come to think of it  . . .  real gold leaf was used to put the numbers on painted wooden gates.  There used to be an extraordinary juxtaposition between the rare and the mundane, the extravagant and the ordinary.)

And it's not just dandelion type plants which bamboozle me  -  there are those too which I suppose to be in the groundsel family.  I've not yet managed to take an interesting photo of groundsel itself.  I think that says more about groundsel than my photography though.  These plants in the picture are growing about eighteen inches high.

I'm forever muddling mustard with rape as well.  Indeed, I'm tempted by the idea of categorising flowers as one might do cars  . . .  yellow ones, purple ones  . . .  (This, for my father, since he began all this, would be heresy.  He didn't actually say Latin names were divinely inspired but there was that sort of air to it.  The stamps in my stamp album were categorised under the names of countries and, if I had enough of them, by date.  I would have preferred to arrange them in pretty patterns but this would have caused mountains to erupt and great fissures to appear in the trembling earth  . . .  so they had to be in rows.  His were ordered not only in countries and by date but in all sorts of other subsections which I didn't quite follow and which resulted in lots of almost empty pages where the appropriate stamps would go if only he had them.  The spaces for the as-yet-uncollected ones were as crucial for the understanding of the whole as were the ones which were already stuck in.  (On stamp hinges which went brittle and flakey and dried out and fell off.) )

Cranesbill, would you say?  (Along with the nettle and dandelion.)  (Oh, and the grass  -  don't forget the grass!)

A low growing pink flower.  Do not be deceived by the buddleia.  The pink flower is on the top of a bank and the buddleia is growing up from lower down.  Tops of trees and daisies are level partners here.

And I'll finish with gorse.

I don't have to finish.  These aren't all the November plants which are flowering.  But gorse is a good place to stop  -  because it doesn't!  Is there a month when gorse doesn't flower?  Gorse and blackberries  . . .  food and fuel and exceptionally pretty flowers (I reckon)  . . .  Hurray for autumn!

P.S.  All the photos in this post were taken on 29th October and 2nd November.