kinsale, back then...

earlier in the evening the air was full of ireland. it must have been the combination of rain, wind from the sea and smoke from the trash pyres, and maybe even the felted hat i put on when fetching the mail. for a moment i looked only at my feet and felt exactly like i was in kinsale again. a longing to be there burst out of my heart and flooded my guts, i haven't felt it so strongly in a long, long time.

strange things, scents.

there is no disputing the change of season once the fly agarics start to emerge. there is also no question whether or not this is the best porcini season ever, for me at least. i've never carried home baskets as heavy. yesterday i picked over two kilos of the porcinis alone, plus all the other boletes and russulas. today's haul must have been over a kilo of porcini, and then other mushrooms on top of that.

there are years when i will take the most infested, maggot-ridden porcini, and certainly something like above. this year i have no trouble thinking "oh well, it belongs to someone else already" and moving on to filling my basket with the perfect, budding ones.

after i took the previous photo, i looked down to my feet and saw one just like that. they don't look like much but there is the big, fat stem beneath the surface...

i also picked some bog bilberries, which are huge this year, as well as lingonberry, bilberry and crowberry. there, in my favourite bog, i spotted one raw cranberry in total, it seems like that harvest is lost. the dry spell was too much, which is a shame because there were more rawlings in the spring than i remember even seeing before. but lingonberries are making up for it, i just have to peel myself from the mushrooms one day and wield the picker a little.

i took some photos to show where, for example, i have spotted porcinis in the past few days. you can pretend to be mushroom-hunting now...

(the third one may be tricky. it's smack middle in the photo, and x literally marks the spot.)

the rain has really roused up the mushrooms these past days but in doing so diluted the thrill of the chase somewhat. so many little russulas and boletes that today i only picked the caps off the latter to keep my basket from becoming too heavy. except ceps, of course, they are too delicious all over to waste any. and there are so many popping up now that the coming days will be a race against maggots and larvae and blight.

freezer is almost full already and it's only august. have to start canning and keep on dehydrating. so much to do, so little focused energy...

couldn't get nice and artsy photos of my hauls so i just made them garish and effect-y instead.

wednesday

thursday

the day before yesterday the season shifted. i could feel it within, autumn starting to fall. also, a slight fragrance in the air, the light a little moodier, and most importantly the temperature cooler, even though technically it's still very very warm.

i sowed new kinds of poppies this year, and most of them didn't make it through the cold june followed by the oven-like july, but the peony-petaled black ones are opening up, all two of them, and i also found some miniature ones in the bud, don't know which ones they are but they could go in the vase in a dollhouse.

my friends' 14-year-old daughter spent last weekend here. it was fun, we went to the woods, swimming and crawled through a cave under a boulder. she had a school project, to identify and photograph plants herbarium-style, and it was all i could do not to take over... kind of jealous i was, we never did it in school and i would have totally aced the task! so, i tried to be helpful but at the same time urge her to do the work. she was great company but i could never be a parent, kids need too much attention and feeding... but it's a kind of luxury to be the cool 'auntie'. of course i'm that much cooler now that i've got the rats.

beets and chard thrive in the garden boat and any day now i will harvest the blue potatoes. i have a lot of catching up to do with foraging and gathering food for winter, though. if i was useless before, now all i do is stare at the rats being silly and adorable, even and especially when they sleep which is pretty much all day.

at last it has started to rain, and some mushrooms are emerging in the woods. i spotted some slime mold that had woken up and started to roam. they fascinate me endlessly. this one's called paranvoi, or the butter of para, a spirit that was said to steal the milk from cows, urged by a witch. it would drop or vomit this yellow substance when running away. similar folklore is known in other nordic countries as well.

there's been a lot of socialicing on my calendar this past week or so, and one such occasion led to my fostering the two furballs pictured above. the rats weren't by any means mistreated before, but their owner felt like she didn't have enough time to give them the attention they deserve and we made an arrangement for them to live with me for now. everyone wins. i haven't had pets for five years so it's a welcome change, having someone to fix dinners for and, of course, the company. we are still getting used to each other but i'm already very fond of them and they don't seem too upset about living with me, either. hopefully these feelings remain the same after tomorrow's task: bathing and mani/pedicuring them. oh dear.

i am wiped out by the hot, hot heat and have been even more useless than usual. the shop update i had planned for the end of july is clearly postponed. blueberries may rot in the woods for all i care (actually, that's not true, i do care a great deal but the weather is just too much for me). there seems to be no end for this in sight. so i'll stick to swimming and eating ice cream, thank you very much. and to the couch, quite literally.