Happy New Year!

Things have been chaotic around here, as you might imagine! Some things, however, don't change. 

I'm still watching the birds, but from the bountiful banister buffet at my sister's house and walks around her neighborhood with Piper. 

I hope 2026 is as delightful as this titmouse enjoying the fattest peanut it could find along the rail. 

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous year! 

And I'll try to be a little better about posting from time to time! :)
 

A Minor Mother's Day Mystery - Mapped

Here's the clue from yesterday, if you missed it - or so you don't have to toggle back and forth to check for the mystery's subject(s). 

The subject in question at the moment is close to the middle of the picture. Not quite perfectly centered (there had to be a little photographic balance, after all). And there is more than one, but the others will be frustratingly elusive from this angle. 

Every year, our family would spend Mother's Day weekend wandering around out in the woods looking for treasure. It was a search to rival any Easter egg hunt and we children had as good a chance to make great discoveries as our parents, since our eyes were lower to the ground and provided an excellent vantage point. 

This is the one you should be able to spot in the mystery picture. I tried to get another picture at the same angle, so you can look for shape and shadow. It's the one that put me on alert. 

Once a little lower to the ground (children's eye level) in an effort to gather the first specimen, its friends were easier to locate. 

My brother and I harvested nearly two gallons of black morels in our afternoon of hunting, but a lot of crawling along on hands and knees through brambles was required to accomplish the feat. 

However, there's nothing quite like a pan of fresh morel mushrooms fried in butter for hors d'oeuvres as a reward for the effort. Yum!

I have made morel mushrooms the subject of one of my block prints, and it was fun to try to keep some of the mystery of the hunt in the final image. If anyone's interested, I can post a picture of it. :) 

A Minor Mother's Day Mystery

This little mystery is especially for BetsyLee (which, in itself, might be a dead giveaway). 

As always, you can click on the image to enlarge it. I left it as big as I possibly could. 

This is on my family's property and reminds me of the group outings we would always take on Mother's Day. The reveal will come tomorrow. :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Fruits of the Field

 Summer sweets are available along the trail for the observant hiker. 

Raspberries are in season and I found a nice patch to raid along the way.

I did a carving of these guys a few years ago with three different blocks and colors, because they're not only delicious, they're visually interesting. 

Baloo loved raspberries and would race me to the treats, so I had to teach little Piper about the joys of berry picking. It didn't take her long to catch on to the goodness. 

She can't reach as high, though, and sometimes asks for a little handout.

This wood satyr butterfly seemed to like hanging out in the brambles, too. 

There's Gold in Them Thar Woods!

Here's the first picture of gold. I was hoping I would find some of these while Piper and I were out walking in the woods. I was quite excited. 

Can you see what made me so enthusiastic? You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it. This was a great find. Of course, I'm one of those odd people that will eat things I pick up off the ground. :)

And this was only one of the blooms I found. 

Here's another batch I found farther from the trail in a different area. 

Here's more glorious edible gold. Chanterelles are such a choice mushroom, with a marvelous, meaty texture and a flavor that blends that earthy umami flavor with a little bit of fruity goodness. 

It's also a good mushroom for a beginner to identify, since once you know what it looks like, it would be really hard to mistake it for anything else. 

Here's a beautiful, big bowl ready to slice and sauté. I was able to put three 8 ounce bags into the freezer for later use and still have a few left over for my scrambled eggs. Woo hoo! 

Trailcam Throwback Thursday

Every now and then the trail cameras capture something pretty spectacular that would be nearly impossible to see in person. The candid shots of the animals going about their daily rounds are always enjoyable.

Last fall, though, we got an amazing glimpse of a bobcat returning home with a fat fox squirrel for a breakfast feast. It's rare that we get to see them when we're out in the woods, since they're primarily nocturnal - we catch a rare glimpse of one running across our path, but nothing so relaxed and content as this. The carpet of brilliant maple leaves is pretty spectacular too.

I know, poor squirrel, but that's the way of nature. The bobcat has to make a living, too.

There's a Morel to This Story

It's hunting season again. Time to get out and stalk the wild things.

These little beauties can really hide among the leaf litter and matted grasses, so it's a treat to spot the distinctive pattern of true treasure.

My brother and I covered some territory and had a pretty good outcome this year. We hope there will be more to come. Yes, I admit it - we're greedy like that. :)

The old favorite mushroom hunting areas we traipsed through with our parents when we were children succumbed to the emerald ash borer and died out with the ash trees, so we're always looking for new spots where they've decided to bloom.

A couple gallons later, we were pretty happy with our efforts. 

Yes, there were some extras in another bag that made their way into a pan for hors d'oeuvres as a bonus. 

Yum!

Happy Easter!

I just had to pop in and wish you all a very Happy Easter! This time with a little bit of carved art. :)

 

Every now and then, the back yard bunnies give me a perfect pose - and I couldn't resist carving this one. 

I hope you and your loved ones have a joyful celebration - finding eggs, feasting and spotting the occasional Easter bunny on its way home from a long night of spreading springtime delights. Not to mention chocolate... 

Crab Apple Crisp

There's a lovely little crab apple tree in my front yard. Some years, it is loaded with fruit and this is one of the very fruitful years.

 
The birds hadn't been paying much attention to it until yesterday's snowfall.

Suddenly, the branches came alive with finches and juncos.

The apples must have been frozen, but sometimes freezing makes fruit sweeter, so perhaps that's what they had been waiting for.

The neighborhood wineries wait for grapes to freeze so they can make sweet ice wine, when conditions allow, so that hypothesis makes a little sense, right?

Doesn't madam finch just look happy, with apple bits smeared all over her beak?

It was almost as if the birds all decided to eat dessert first, because after they had their fill of little apples, they flew to the back yard for sunflower seeds and scratch.

I can relate to pie for breakfast, I must admit.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching them feasting in the snow.

 I hope you did, too. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

The wild turkeys on our family property are enjoying a few sunflower seeds and some scratch feed.

 

 The girls are feasting directly under the feeding tree.

 

While the boys are strutting around, feeling pretty chuffed.

And not without reason. They are quite handsome.

I love the way the sun catches their feathers, lighting them up with unexpected metallic copper, blue, bronze and gold.

The lads have the choreography very well rehearsed! The best Thanksgiving Day parade ever!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are all sharing a special feast with friends and family!

Field to Table

In the spirit of more fungal frivolity to start the week (although I'm not sure I can make Mushroom Mondays go on much past the first freeze), I thought I would share a successful mushroom hunt.

My brother and I checked a few spots where we've found chanterelles growing in the past, since they seem to have favorite environments where they appear from time to time, when the conditions are right.

It's always a thrill to spot patches of bright yellow in the woods (although, sometimes aspen leaves that have fallen early can trick a person)! As you can see, we had some excellent luck and found a couple blooms that made our efforts quite worthwhile.

We shared some of the bounty with an Amish elder that loves mushrooms and sometimes shares some of the shiitake mushrooms he grows on logs harvested from our family property for that purpose.

Each of us kept a beautiful bag of chantrelles to take home for future fungal feasting.

It's nice to have a few little packages in the freezer to break out for a special meal. 

Yum!

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

Well, not really chicken dinner, but Hen-of-the-Woods dinner. That's even better!!

 

My brother and I were gifted a huge hen-of-the-woods mushroom. He shared some with one of his mushroom hunting friends and we split the rest.

 

As you can see, when you get one of these mushrooms, it's usually a big deal in more ways than one.

After cleaning it all up, I sauteed it in a little butter and olive oil and have several packages in the freezer to enjoy over the winter. It's great for soups, in omelettes or rice pilaf - you get the idea. It's a delicious mushroom and will enhance any dinner. No chicken required. We definitely felt like winners. 

Yum!!

Spectacular Sunrise

On a chilly morning, not so long ago, (Pi Day, to be exact) I picked up a friend and went to watch the sun rise on the opposite side of the peninsula. I usually wander around on the western shore, but after I shared the pictures of the moon setting, my friend thought it might be fun to go watch the sun come up.

It was a very cold morning for March. The weather app on my phone said it was 11 degrees, so layers were the order of the day!

The color was pretty dramatic, lighting up both the sky and the bay.

The sun painted the undersides of the clouds with brilliant reds and golds.

It was well worth getting up extra early to get there in time.

Ducks were paddling around in the shallows and seagulls swooped around overhead (there's one in the upper right part of this picture).

It was a beautiful way to start the day. And, of course, we met my sister at my house and all had quiche to celebrate Pi Day! (And the next day, too, since everybody got to take some Pi home with them.)