Managing Not to Poison Myself

I emerged from the woods with a pair of treasures: a little bolete mushroom, that I'd originally gone out looking for, and a bonus chunk of chicken mushroom.

I started by peeling the orange off the top of the chicken mushroom, and scraping the pores off the underside from the bolete. It smelled really fantastic.  The taste was a little disappointing, not bad just a little bit sour.  I ate both of them raw, which apparently isn't recommended, but the chicken mushroom was actually pretty good.  I'll have to give our boletes another try, and next time figure out a way to cook them.

Bolete Homework, Part II

This is my second attempt to follow along with Ms. Graveyard Dirt's mushroom lesson.

We had a decent rain Sunday night, so I set back out on Monday to hunt the wild bolete.  I did some reading after my first expedition, and discovered that the neon yellow fungus I'd decided couldn't possibly be edible was in fact chicken of the woods, so I planned to make my way back to the other end of the woods where I found it, and hoped it was still there.

I found a lot more mushrooms overall this trip, but almost all were the regular gilled mushrooms, and most had been made meals of by the time I got to them.

Late to supper.

I started off looking around in the area where I'd seen that first bolete a while back.  What I found instead were what I think are puffballs.  After no sign of the elusive bolete, I started making my way back to where I saw the chicken mushroom, keeping my eyes on the ground.

Can I eat this?

Lichen?  Fungus?  Lichen-covered fungus?

Up the hill, through the oaks, down the hill, through the stand of birch and maple, passing under the thorny vines that hang over the old path along the edge of the marsh.  No boletes.  Lots of little brown mushrooms, little white mushrooms, most half-eaten.  I was beginning to get discouraged.  The good news is the chicken mushroom was still there, and it had grown.  I took one of the smaller fans from the side, and decided it was time to head back.

So of course, after I gave up, after I'd stopped bothering to even look for them -

Gold!

Bolete Homework, Part I

Ms. Graveyard Dirt gave her readers an assignment: Find a bolete!

I had heard of boletes before, but my earlier enthusiasm for mushrooms never really got very far.  And back home, I never managed to find one.  I saw my first one this year, actually.  It stuck out at me because I'd read about them but never seen them, so when I finally did I was excited like I'd found some mythical creature in the woods.  But I left it alone, because it had been awhile and I didn't quite remember how safe they were.

So of course, a few days after, there winds up being a whole lesson on mushroom hunting in my RSS feed, with instructions to go find one.

I went back to where I had found that first one, but it was dead, black, and shriveled.  And even though I looked all through the woods, I had no luck finding any other boletes.  I did manage to find some other fungus, though.  There were a few gilled mushrooms, and some kind of bright neon yellow lumpy thing on a dead log.  Nothing that color could possibly be edible, I thought.

I think it had just been too dry for mushrooms.  I didn't come back completely empty handed, though.  I found a beautiful yellow feather, and a glass bottle that was broken in just such a way that I think it'll make a nice candle holder once I've washed it off.

Hope

Seeing Fairies

 

I was a day late, but I went out midsummer and gathered fern spores.  They're so tiny, like dust.  Managed to get quite a few - filled a gallon ziplock bag with the branches, from a few different species.  I left even more behind, along with a small blood offering to the mosquitoes.

Rubbed on the eyelids, the fern spores are supposed to grant the power to see fairies.  Of course, it's supposed to be male fern, which I couldn't find, and it's supposed to be midsummer's eve, when I was working both jobs, but we'll see how this does.  Maybe they just don't want to be seen, and arranged everything against me.

Time is a Non-Renewable Resource

The changing seasons got me thinking... for each year, there's one spring.  One summer.  One fall, one winter.  At most, I'll probably live eighty- or ninety-someodd years.  Living in New England has given me a new appreciation for spring and summer, and I've already let pass about a third of all the ones I'll ever see.  That should probably spur me into my various projects with renewed vigor, but all it does is depress me.

On a lighter note, I'm envious of all the herbs growing around where I work.  There's a big patch of broadleaf plantain, yarrow, ground cherry, Queen Anne's lace, lamb's quarters, mullein, skullcap... but I don't dare use any of it, because I work at a garage.  Going to see if I can harvest some seeds, maybe, and get some of this stuff growing around the house.  Not with my luck with seeds, but maybe I can disperse them and cross my fingers.  Of course, even if they grow they won't necessarily do me any good.  A lot of those I have growing in our yard already, but my husband mows them down!  Need to get better at cultivating, so I can transplant and have them all in a little plot to mark off limits to the mower.

Green Salve

I just finished making a cut, scrape, bite, and burn salve. It's jojoba oil infused with wildcrafted plantain, yarrow, and curly dock, lavender and tea tree essential oils, with vitamin E and some aloe pulp. This is my third salve, and
so far they've all turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. My mom used to make a version of it all the time - I think she added comfrey, but I didn't have any.

For some reason I was always intimidated by the process. I imagined bizarre alchemical equipment and timing and instructions that had tobe followed to the letter... Looking back, I don't know where the idea came from that it had to be difficult. I mean, I watched my mom do it. But it couldn't be /easy/, could it?

In fact, I wouldn't even say it's easy. It's trivial. At least my experiences so far have been.

It's just a base oil, plus whatever other oils, with some beeswax.

I got started with it because I have a friend who's allergic to all the over-the-counter antibiotic creams. I figured, she needs some tea tree oil! So I did some research on making a tea tree salve, looked up recipes, and whipped her up a batch.

I had fun making it, so I had to go and get fancy.

I infused some lavender and sage in olive oil for the second salve, as just a smell-good hand cream. The lavender scent didn't really seem to take very well, although I may have just been impatient. I only left it in for a couple days, but I also tried heating it on the stove for about a half hour... eventually I just added lavender essential oil, and then some vanilla extract. The smell is green and sweet, a little kitcheny but without really smelling like food.

There is kind of a trick to the oil infusing - you have to make sure all of the herbs are completely covered by the oil, because if the air gets to them they'll rot. (You also have to not forget about them.)

At some point I should probably start measuring my ingredients...