damp hands

clouds lie on the land like a damp hand, staunching the blood flow from the hills. 

slippery

... now it is easy to see why this mushroom is called slippery. The woods are stuffed full of fungi, but what can we eat? 

dunironin

this is not what Princesses are supposed to be doing. Harriet goes on strike. 

stinkhorn

...at long last we have found a stinkhorn. We can always smell them but they are difficult to find 

late begonias

autumn in Luckett (Broadgate); it is almost November but the hanging baskets are still full of begonias in bloom

persicaria

slippery jack

almost every mushroom that I find has a small bite out of its cap, is there a mad mushroom taster in the parish? This is (probably; the guide books are always a bit vague) slippery jack because the surface is very slimy (glutinous in the jargon) and has distinctly yellowish flesh growing in the pine plantations at Kelly Bray. Edible, perhaps. I think that I am a mycophobic lurcher and must therefore be descended from a long line of anglosaxon hounds.

fuchsia

this elegant fuchsia was flowering in Kelly Bray woods, it is not f. magellanica found in the wild (but not native?) and must be an escapee. It has been suggested recently that about one-quarter of plants sold to ornamental gardeners since the 1800s have escaped, and 30 per cent of these are firmly established in the English countryside.

golden waxcaps

 

moss mushrooms

they are springing up all over the place 

they're back

.... a little joie de vivre to celebrate a walk in the woods. 

parasols

more trouble with fungi. This looks like a Saxon war shield from above. The more we look in mushroom and fungi books the more confused we get. It might be an agaric, the gills are pink ... the ring is , well, ringy. Can we eat it? You try first.

I'm back

well, I have had a fantastic two weeks with John and Fiona. Mum and Dad are back, they have gone a strange brown colour and smell of alcohol and spices. They went to More_itious and want to go back! So do we. This is not a local spider, but it does illustrate that the web is indeed world wide. The woods are becoming very autumnal but the weather feels completely out of synch> What is going on?