Funny fungi

I've done this a lot before, photos of fungi, it's that time of year. I've even got a tag for them. That's rather the problem with this kind of blogging, and of life in the countryside, I suppose. The seasons have a habit of coming round again and again with much the same features. Or perhaps it's not a problem. 

Anyway, fungi continue to be weird and wonderful, these were all found in the garden, a more appealing thing to be doing there than sweeping up leaves.

The above growths appear in the holes left in eucalyptus trunks, when branches split and break, as they often do. I wonder why a non-native species should so readily host passing fungi, but I don't really know anything about it.

The frilly orangey ones below, at different stages of their fruition (for mushrooms and toadstools are all fruiting bodies) are all over the ground among the leaf litter:

I've only tended to edit them a bit by deepening the shadows to accentuate the form, but with the two below, as I'd got a bit carried away with the digital zoom on the camera and they looked rather odd and fuzzy, I put a 'lomo' filter on them in Picasa, for fun: 

Change, death and decay, that's fungi for you.

Weirdest and most alien and macabre of all are these earth balls, puffballs' dark doppelgangers:

It's their planet really, theirs and the insects'. We're just passing through.

Autumn groundscapes

The kind of thing I used to do a lot, it's still good to do it.

The winds and rains blowing in, the edges of the storms which are wreaking havoc across the Channel are finally stripping the trees of their foliage, but it's been a very fine autumn.

Mushroom duxelles

The painters and decorators are back after a five day recess, on account of how they were making the bridge for Toussaint. They tend to start early but aren't really any trouble. My blue room is now entirely white and cream and looks much larger already. I don't mind a bit.

The misty mornings and warm afternoons, Intercession in Late October weather, have brought about a good crop of field mushrooms.

They are good and clean, scarcely any grass or other VM* to pick off them even, and very little insect damage. However, though we had the smallest and firmest of them fried with some bacon and a baked potato, they were a bit too dew soggy to do much with except make duxelles.

For this, after wiping them, chop them up small, then do the same with a shallot or two. Soften the shallot in half and half butter and olive oil, then add the mushrooms, with salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg is good, and a slosh of sherry-like liquid (Rivesaltes in this case). Reduce it all to a thick gloop, then leave it to cool a bit, and I then freeze it in small portions in cake papers, the only use I have for cake papers as I don't bake. One can then just plop them into soups stews and sauces for extra flavour as and when.

I somehow thought when going through the great purge, that I would no longer do these kind of squirrelling, putting-up-for-winter type things, and would live more lightly and immediately, seeking only what I needed when I needed it, but I can't help myself, and we will be here another winter anyway, and it's free food for the foraging. I'm also beginning to regret getting rid of one or two things, like the totally shapeless pair of jeans that were lined with soft brushed stripy cotton and made me feel like I was wearing pyjamas under them. Nevertheless, I wilfully relish the new found order and space around things and am resolved not to mess and fill it up again, and the jeans really were ugly and unflattering.

* awesome link to Australian Wool Innovation site, I didn't know there were so many nasty things that weren't meant to be in wool...

November again

This November marks my tenth anniversary of blogging. Still here. And in keeping with tradition, I'm going to post every day of November, just because I can. Toning up the blogging muscles, carrying the camera, getting back into the habit of recording the mundane quotidian etc, nothing very ambitious except to post every day.

We have been having an October as they always should be, and frequently are, these Indian summers surprise almost with the regularity of spring; chill, thin, misty mornings blooming and filling out into golden, luminous afternoons. I have a dog again who runs with joy in sunlit fields and gets me out again to appreciate these days afresh. Her paraphernalia of lead and clicker and treats take up space and hands, so carrying the camera, even when I think to, is more of an awkward effort, and I'm missing my sleeveless walking vests with their multiple pockets, which along with winter coats and the sofa throws and cushions and several carpets and quite a few other things are still at the dry cleaners post-fire, but when the decorators have finished, which shouldn't be long, we'll get them back. 

This is our twentieth year of living here, so I've been blogging for more than half of that. Despite their beauty, these open, airy, largely empty, agrarian uplands, maize and manure and tractors and shotguns three times a week through the autumn and much of the winter, are losing their appeal for me. I find I want, rather a lot, to be among riverside villages and ports and apple orchards. It may yet happen.

Back tomorrow.

Firewood delivery, etc. In haste.

Arrived a bit after 11, 

stacked by lunchtime. Chicken and veg soup with dumplings. Then the hedge man came, then we had to fetch the car, then order the nurse for a routine blood test for Thursday (yes, we have district nurses here), now I'm off to see this concert. 

Quite a busy day really, unseasonably beautiful weather, no fires yet.

The chimney sweep's dog...

... Joe Cocker, has grown a bit since last year, but is still as adorable,

those whiskers in front of his eyes are testimony that he needs a haircut - I was assured he was getting one on Monday.

He and the chimney sweep are still as besotted.

When his dad says gently to him 'à ta place!',

he duly drops down and settles into the driving seat.

We're sure to get our chimney swept every year now.

Bonfire night

Today would be Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night: light up the sky; remember, remember ... Only not here it isn't, or anywhere other than the UK, I presume. I was reading Dale's counter-blast to Halloween the other day (my purposeful blog revival has indeed meant that I'm keeping up better with other people's too),  in revolt against the idea of seeing death and decay and horror, only too real and serious a matter, as subjects for fun, and the legitimising of playing with disguise and deception and fear.

I instantly found sympathy with the dissent from conformity with what the prevailing culture tells us we should and shouldn't join in with and enjoy, while at the same time I experienced a 'steady on, but where's the harm?' kind of reaction too. But no one should be obliged to go along with anything they have a strong objection or discomfort or revulsion about for fear of being considered a killjoy or lacking a sense of fun - 'where's your sense of humour?' was always the bully's evasion. It is important to question quite why we're observing a custom or festival, and not simply mouth the received ideas as a reflex. I suppose these are, that we need to confront our monsters, to dare death, to permit a degree of controlled misrule, all within a safe context, that those things are represented in a ritualised way that contains and puts them somewhere else, so, in Dale's words, you can go 'back to a world in which it's not true' (though, as he points out, 'there is no world in which it's not true'). Or, that it's simple community fun and creativity, now rendered innocent, harmless and well-supervised. This may be all be so, but it's still worth looking twice.

We didn't really mark Halloween much when I was growing up in the south of England, I don't know if that went for everywhere in Britain, perhaps Scotland and Ireland were different. We knew about it, and once when I was little my sister helped me make a witch costume, and painted horrid wrinkles on my face which was fun because I wasn't normally allowed to draw on myself. But there was no question of going out and about like that, the greengrocers' had yet to stock a pumpkin and we didn't get around to working out how to hollow out a turnip. Our Samhain, onset of winter, festival of lights was Bonfire, Guy Fawkes, Night, of which there were elements that could be conflated with Halloween. We received a certain amount of historical information about this event at school; it was stressed that attempts to blow up the king and parliament, or anyone really, were a Bad Thing and could not end well, but the Catholic/Protestant issue was only lightly touched on, as was the hanging, drawing and quartering, though it was probably where we first heard of it. The shudder and disgust at this could be allayed by the reassurance that was all a long time ago, we could turn back with relief to our world in which it was no longer true. Mostly though, our teachers were concerned with trying to put the fear of god into us about the misuse of fireworks and the horrific results thereof.

Knowing how poor Guido actually met his end, it was slightly puzzling that we made a model of him and burned it - it was witches that were burned wasn't it? Again, a bit of muddling of history. In fact, the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy rather took over, I gather, from the more frequent burning of the pope, which was the usual way of partying on November the 5th for a couple of hundred years. They still do at the famous Lewes bonfire in East Sussex, though it's made clear it's Paul V, the one reigning at the time of the Gunpowder plot, in commemoration of some earlier Protestant martyrs, not the current one, and he shares the honour with various contemporary figures.

Our guy was made from old clothes, stuffed with straw and newspaper, a nasty yellow or orange papier maché mask from the news agents' shop. Other children carried their guys into the streets and sat them up and begged 'a penny for the guy'; I don't know if this still goes on, perhaps the possibility of allowing children out alone into the dark to importune strangers for money has fallen victim to the fear of other, more recognisable, monsters. But this aspect of extortion, of somewhat menacing, misruled children begging from adult citizens shares something with trick-or-treating. Later, when the latter custom appeared, many people were appalled by the idea of children being allowed to get sweets by the threat of violence or damage.

Anyway, the bonfire of old household and garden waste was lit well in advance just beyond the box elder tree, and my father and brothers, lit up ghastly orange in its light, carried the guy shoulder high and tossed him into the flames. We carefully chose our fireworks, kept indoors and brought out one by one with some ceremony, and lit them with tapers, never matches, the biggest rockets saved for last. I liked the pretty ones, the silver showers and golden rains and Christmas trees. Bangers I hated, though my brother liked them, probably because I hated them, and the rockets and catherine wheels were too unpredictable. Then we went in and ate baked potatoes and sausages in the kitchen.

Vivid memories, for sure, but treasured ones? I certainly enjoyed something of the heightened atmosphere, the element of danger and dark magic, of orange fire and black night, but there was also quite a bit of anxiety, our teachers' dire warnings did impress on me, though we would never have misused a firework, ever, and I was always worried about the animals, our cats and others, or the hedgehogs that might have crept into the bonfire. Also, the burning of the guy did trouble me, not because of any over-imagination of seeing him as a real human, but because the idea of burning our old clothes, and of destroying the work that had gone into making him, was disturbing. It was a kind of sacrifice, however unimportant, and I didn't take it altogether lightly, despite reassurance that it was all in order and permitted.

So, old unhappy far off things, sectarian hatred, historical violence, torture, the burning of effigies, people on the streets of a pretty south east town shouting 'Burn the Pope'! Merry England, happy times. Has it done me any harm, or has it enriched my experience? I don't know. I do still rather like the smell of fireworks, and the taste of baked potatoes. I dare say if there were a cricket club or some such with some fire works in walking distance, and maybe a pub, the King's Arms or whatever, with some good beer, I'd be there.

These days, living in a foreign land, with no children, most festivals and holidays and national commemorations have an opt-out clause for us. The kids here are beginning to get out and about on Halloween a bit, but it's very restrained, often they only really learn about it as part of their English classes; when the neighbours' children came just once a few years ago, they were at great pains to explain they weren't really witches and vampires, but just Sebastian and Sara, whom we knew, pas de souci. There's still a bit of disapproval of it, at the idea of demanding favours, but also I think, as creeping Americanisation, though there was in fact a tradition of it in western Brittany way back, according to Pêr Jakez Helias. The public holiday here is Toussaint, one of many retained religious days-off in this proudly secular and anti-clerical country. Everybody buys mountains of chrysanthemums and covers the cemeteries with them. They truly find a beauty in this, but I'm afraid for me it's rather spoiled the sharp, crisp autumnal odour and bronze starbursts of the chrysanths , since I seem to have fallen into the way of seeing them as inappropriate for anything but graveyards. Perhaps I should go out and buy a pot and reclaim my pleasure in them.

We used to trundle down the road for the 14 July fireworks, though not for the St Jean bonfire, but we don't bother now, largely because it means driving and parking and anyway, it really starts too late, what's the sense in having your bonfire and fireworks night at midsummer, for heavens' sake, when it's scarcely dark till midnight and the kids have to stay up till all hours? And yes, I have already received the retort, delivered quite seriously to my flippant remark, that Desmoulins and co were not thinking of that when they stormed the Bastille. Also, though, it's not our celebration; the first heads on pikes of the great decapitation fest, outside a nearly empty prison where there weren't any arms held after all, doesn't do much to move me to joy really, any more than the fate of Guy Fawkes should have done. And I still worry about the animals, the dog down the road left outside to bark in distress at the bangs and cracks in the distance, while his owners are off at the party.

Today would have been fairly useless for bonfires anyway, as it's rained all day. We aren't really allowed to have them at all any more, but most people in the countryside do from time to time. Thorny things and perennial weed roots have to be disposed of somehow. For other prunings, we have our splendid, still quite new shredder, and that's what I did today, turned a pile of branches and twigs and and leaves  into wholesome mulch, under the shelter of our newly repaired barn roof.

There were some bay tree cuttings among them, so the resulting pot pourri had the sweet scent of a good potato soup.

Clerodendron, and a calendar poem.

Clerodendron trichotomum, was in front of me while I was sitting out yesterday.

I've never troubled to find out anything about it before, simply enjoyed it for the fact that it is attractive and unusual in several ways at different stages, with bright pretty leaves in spring and autumn, dainty flowers with a heady jasmine perfume in the summer, and then these extraordinary bracts and berries in autumn, the latter a shade of blue rarely found in nature, and quite metallic in their lustre. I also learn from the wiki article, though, that it is sometimes known as the peanut butter tree, because its leaves smell of peanut butter when crushed, which I have never noticed but shall seek to confirm when I next go past it.

The person who gave it to us, as a sucker from his own garden, I do not recall with great affection, and sometimes when Tom refers to it, since the Latin will elude him, he does so as 'that thing what's-his-name gave us' in a tone of mixed embarrassment and contempt. However, it would be unfair to hold that against the shrub, and since in the histoire* of the estrangement I felt myself, for once, more sinned against than sinning, it is really not too much of a bad association at all. Indignation is really much less uncomfortable and persistent than remorse.

~

Jeff looked in last post, which was nice. Now his is a blog I've only discovered in the last couple of years, I think, which shows there are still unexpected treasures to be found in this sphere. He's a very erudite and talented American mediaevalist, which is a delight in itself, and a friendly, interesting all-round good egg, I reckon. He's just started posting monthly instalments of a long poem, inspired by his move from city to country and by mediaeval calendar poems. It's gorgeous: dense and mysterious but vivid and inviting at the same time, full of alliteration and figures and images calling up Anglo-Saxon verse and books of hours, but also telling of his own inner journey, memories and transformations. The latest has skies full of constellations and the figures that inhabit them, 'windows ... wicked with life', spiders and a salutary dialogue with a mantis, and this, which I hope might be true:

Whatever you’re certain won’t sing to you now
Waits to be witness to one formal act:
Recite the things you see and hear
Freely, even if others brand it
Daft enchantment or a children’s song,
And start simple. The sense can wait:
“She swept the ash from the iron grate…”
“Sage and parsley in pots left behind…”
“Three white horses on a hillside farm…”

A great friend suggested recently that if now is a time when the writing of poems has deserted me, it might be a good one to read some, and indeed, blogs are still where they may be found, I find.

* I use franglais carefully and for a reason, as I like to think I usually do; I am leery and rather disdainful of it otherwise. Histoire is story and history, but also a business, a matter, a fuss... covers quite a lot, and fits the bill.

Visits and yallery-brown things

Still about, this hillside haunting. Had a visit from my lovely sister, which was most enjoyable. She's not been here as late in the year as this, but resolutely refused to admit being cold despite that this can be a difficult time where temperatures are concerned, a chill in the air but not enough to light the fire yet; we have to have it in for easily five months of the year and are reluctant to start too soon, as then we don't feel the benefit, as one's mothers used to say.

We got about, visited Lamballe market in its autumn plenty, caught the annual Mathurin Meheut exhibition there before it closed for the winter, puppy-sat and walked Dutch E's lovely but rather timorous new young dog Bram, and visited the mohair goats of Corlay, which surprisingly I hadn't done before, and where we indulged in sumptuous fibre and scratched the little kid goats' woolly foreheads. We ate rather well, pulled pork and fish pie and rotisserie chicken and Tom's finest sour potato and chicken massala curries, with Turkish flatbread from an interesting and hearteningly popular new stall on the market run by a chap called Aslan.

Then my Mayenne brother and sister-in-law came and took her away, on the way back from an overnight jaunt on the Paimpol peninsular, which it was good to see them enjoying, and we were able to catch up a bit with them, eat some more, and discuss the sticky issue of septic tanks.*

So I have drifted away from here again rather, and taken few photos. A degree of seasonal lassitude and general reluctance about all kinds of things has set in, pleasures become chores, chores become onerous. The inspiration and good cheer of our Low Lands trip is fading rather; I know that I gazed and gazed at Memling's St Barbara and her velvety drapes, and had a quiet kind of antique torso of Apollo moment of conviction, and brought it back home with me intact, but both spirit and flesh are weakening somewhat now. Thinking about seasonal affectedness, I find it hard to be sure whether the low level of anxiety and apprehensiveness that the approach of winter brings is cause or effect. I do look forward to winter; I love to be lazy, hibernation, cosiness and indoors are pleasing to me, but always there is the uncertainty of what it will bring, how the fabric of the house will stand up to the weather, the hedgeman cometh with his robust power tools and his robust chiding, and there are still jobs to be done which my inward turning tendencies recoil from, will the plans of winter travel and visitors which promise to brighten and enliven the darkest days be brought to nothing by catastrophy? The summer is ended and we are not saved...

But all manner of things shall be well, no doubt, and in spite of this, and although the blogging world is a quieter place generally, I continue to be touched, amused and moved the words and images of my blogging friends. Saddened too, by departures, sad news, melancholy reflections, of course, but always grateful.

So, here are a few yallery-brown things of the season, but no falling leaves.

In fact this looks more like something of high summer, but is still blooming away with freshness and aplomb, a piece of waste land just as one enters Lamballe from our direction, planted entirely with sunflowers and phacelia, agaisnt the gold of the yellowing poplars. Unfortunately they were all turning away from us when we passed.

My sister is always up for Lamballe market. bless her. We browsed all the veggie stalls, scanned the Dutch couple's haberdashery and laughed at the big van full of shockingly expensive, passion-killing flannelette nighties, old-ladies' polyester housecoats and winter undies, as usual. Then we sized up the rotisseries chicken and homed in on my very favourite veg-man from Finistère. I think everything there is grown locally to him, it is always seasonal and sometimes surprising. It's a big stall with just the one man running it, so you select your own and queue to weigh and pay, which keeps it cheap and also means you spot something else while you're waiting to put in the beautifully illustrated brown paper bags.

The only thing I needed was some green chillies, which I didn't really expect him to have but lo, there were a small box of Espelette  types just by the scales, along with some fresh cobnuts:

(The ones with the husks still on are from our purple filbert tree, we share them with the voles, alas no squirrels for a long time. The Brazils are left from who-knows when, the odd chestnut from hereabouts)

I couldn't resist pink Roscoff onions, picked out by rustling through the loose outer husks like a bran tub, at a euro a kilo, which makes the string I got from the sets I grew in the garden absurdly uneconomic, but then there are other, sentimental reasons for growing them. He still had a large number of tomatoes of every size shape and colour, and though I don't really care for yellow tomatoes I had to bring this  elephant-man one back, it was the size of a small pumpkin, and marvellously striped:

These are my butternut crop, a variety called 'Sprinter', specially selected for chillier, shorter seasons, I got seven decent sized ones and a couple of runts. Again I probably saved little by growing them as they are to be found everywhere just now, but there is still satisfaction in having, and sharing, them;

Tom, who isn't over-fond of any kind of yellow squash, says they remind him of the mandrakes in Harry Potter.

And of course, there is knitting, some of it yellow. A very quick knit was these Minion mittens for Princeling's eighth birthday, which I gather went down well,

though I know nothing of Minions and am rubbish at crochet, which was necessary for the eye-goggles.

Taking much longer was this pullover for Tom. He chose the colour, the rest is my fault, I might say, but in fact, once upon a time, he had a gold coloured sweater, in a fine acrylic rib which, despite that unpromising description, we both rather liked. He still has it in fact but it has grown thin and tired and he has grown out of it. I undertook to replace it, and, in a state of hope over experience, I somehow thought (modified) drop shoulders and half-fisherman's rib would be a good idea. Half a year and half a hundredweight later, I was drawing towards the finish line. He slipped the sewn-together body pieces over his head, and I held the sleeves up to check the length. Again, why did I not know? It's not like I haven't been caught out on this before. If you should be interested, and in the position of knitting a drop-shouldered jumper, especially a chunky one, hold your nerve, those sleeves may not look it now but they will be long enough! 

But no, I spent many more hours and quite a bit more wool MAKING THEM LONGER. Aargh. Then when I had carefully sewed it all up, and he tried it on again and, of course, the drop shoulders did what their name indicates they would do, and the ends of the sleeves hung down way below his hands almost to his knees, did I do the sensible thing and unpick the seams, undo the tops of the sleeves and unravel them till they got to the required length? No, I decided, I kid you not, based on the fact I had once fairly successfully cut the bottom off a waistcoat in stocking stitch and picked up the stitches again, to chop off the ends off.

The Sunday before last was then spent in a yellow snowstorm of snipped yarn, obsessively trying to find a way to viably pick up the always unfathomable structure of half-fisherman's rib so as to re-knit the cuffs. The end result was massive, weirdly truncated sleeves, brutally gathered into cuffs like leg-o-muttons, and attempts to disguise this butchery by not-quite-canny enough wielding of the crochet hook.

But did Tom look with horror at the resulting garment? He did not, but has been wearing it proudly much of the time since, despite its not really being cold enough, and I consider myself blessed among women to the final degree of uxoriousness. So we went out into the autumn garden for a photo shoot.

I favoured the background of autumn leaves, but when he wanted to pose in proper knitting pattern style, he was without means of support, and ended up laughing rather a lot and getting puffed out in his big hot sweater:

Then he found a plant tub and regained his dignity and an elegant pose. Roger Moore eat your heart out.

* Still ongoing. We are now tending strongly towards a micro-station even though we won't receive any grant towards it. An old sand bed soak-away, still the only system accepted by the SPANC as being worthy of subsidy, is really too problematical and encumbering, and really very backward.