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.)
