Pardon me. I seem to have a blogging malaise this week. Every time I sit down to blog nothing comes of it. I do have things to blog about, just no voice. Ever feel that way? Maybe if I sit here and write things down it will help to jump start myself.

I’ve been having this feeling lately that I am at a turning point. About to do something great and wonderful but I don’t yet know what that is. Something creative. Something with photography? Go out and get myself a job? I don’t know what it is. Just this nagging feeling running around inside my head. I feel I should be doing something but I’m too lazy to figure out what. On the cusp.

Kind of like our weather which is vacillating between summer and fall. Yesterday it was in the 70s; last week in the 50s and lower 60s. The trees are turning, but seemingly in slow motion. I am still mowing the grass which continues to grow. The cicadas that have been quiet for the past month (and I presumed them dead and gone) have started up again singing their scratchy songs. It’s strange. This weather spell we are in with sunny-blue-sky-days and warmth is admittedly gorgeous, but I am so longing for cool, crisp days. It’s time.

I’ve gotten back to knitting after not really being in the mood for it throughout the summer. I finished my sister’s Maine Mitts and have been working along on my Three Button Sassy Shawl. I’ve knitted 38 of the 54 inches so far. It’s mindless work, straight stockinette, but I’d like to be able to wear it before the weather turns too cold. I would like to start this, but since I have never tried intarsia before I feel it might be too much for me to take on. See what I mean? Excuses!

I’ve also been feeling the void of my parents lately. My mother’s death last year still haunts me. And I haven’t dreamt about my father in years, yet now almost every night when I dream they are both there. In my dream. Together. If I dream about them,  I usually dream about one or the other, but not both at the same time. Instead of making me feel closer to them I find it very unsettling and it stays with me throughout the day. My father was kind of a psychic and always able to read me, so is he trying to tell me something?

Normally a good walk in the woods would help to clear my mind and get my thoughts back into some semblance of order again. But after coming home from just such a walk the other day and finding tiny little ticks (deer ticks, the kind that carry Lymes disease) crawling on my neck I vowed to stay out of the woods for awhile. Maybe I should just douse myself in bug repellent and go for it anyway.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten all that off my mind maybe I can get back to normal blogging again. I still have our wonderful mushroom foraging adventure to share with you. And the dragging on ABC-Along which I seem to be having so much trouble with. Everyone else is on “T” while I am still struggling with “P”.

Thanks for listening.

Yes, I know. I am stuck taking photos of fungi lately. With all our rain I have to take advantage of seeking them out while they are fresh and new. I can’t help it, I find them fascinating. And so many different varieties. Take a look. (Letty, I promise—no slugs!) When possible I have added their names (no, I didn’t make them up even with some you would think so). Some of them I found just in our own woods in our yard, while other were found in the woods near Green Turtle Pond where I frequently take walks.

These were fresh and new the day after the rain. I haven’t identified them yet.

Crowded Parchment. The first one is older; the second photo shows what it looks like when it first blooms.

Mossy Maple Polypore

Let’s look a little closer at this one. Doesn’t this little one remind you of the creature in Alien?

Looking like some kind of exotic coral formation is Radiating Phlebia.

I don’t have name for this one but I loved how it just kept stacking up on itself. It might be Violet-Toothed Polypore (see second photo). Notice the purplish cast?

Not identified.

 

Unidentified.

 

Unidentified, but I love the grayish-blue colors!

 

Turkey Tails! (for obvious reasons)

 

Orange Jelly. Please don’t spread this on toast!

 

Thin Maze Flat Polypore.

 

Birch Polypore; second photo is how it looks from the bottom.

This one has the unfortunate name of Wolf’s Milk Slime. ewww ...

What did you think? Did you find them fascinating or ugly? I think most people don’t even notice them. If you live in a moist environment where you get quite a bit of rain, why not look around and see if you can find some? Pick a day after you’ve gotten some really good moisture and go hunting!

All these are inedible, so please don’t try to eat any of them. I know, I know—you are all thinking to yourselves as if I would eat anything that looked like that ...

Stay tuned for my next post on some very edible and delicious fungi!

This is the time of year that’s sort of in limbo. Summer is over but Autumn isn’t quite here yet. The leaves on the trees are dull looking but still a washed-out green, not yet ready to put on their vibrant show. The undergrowth in the woods has died back and we are now able to see into the woods further than we could a month ago. After our heat wave of last weekend (compliments of Ike) we are now having cool nights in the 40s and lovely days in the 60s. Perfection! So why does part of me want Autumn to come on and get on with it, make the trees change and etc? Why can’t I be satisfied to just enjoy this wonderful fall weather?

The sun is lower in the sky and the quality of the light is much softer. Here it shines through the leaded glass of our front door, creating a wonderful prism on the wall.

The oaks are dropping their acorns and what doesn’t fall to the ground naturally is being helped along by squirrels in the tree tops. Our recently delivered two cords of firewood is finally all stacked and waiting. I look forward to our first fire in the fireplace of the year.

Most things are done blooming now and my garden beds are looking pretty sad and blah. I do, however, have some of this pretty stuff blooming. I don’t know what it is, do you? I think I remember it showing up about this time last year too.

The pool was closed for the season yesterday. We’ll still continue to go down and sit in the cabana but it won’t be the same without being able to look into its blue depths. We really didn’t get much use out of it this year. August was pretty much a washout because the temperatures were unseasonably cool. We’ve had some hot weather this month but too late to bring the pool temps back up to a swimmable level. We really are considering a heater for next year. But they are so darned expensive, both to put in and run.

We have a busy weekend planned. Today we will step back in time and join in the revelry at the New York Renaissance Faire for their last weekend of the season. Rick will don his lace-up leather boots, billowy white shirt and vest, and I will once again put on my bodice and leave my bra behind.

Tomorrow we have tickets to the last ever Yankees game in Yankee Stadium. Should be fun!

Hope your weekend is a good one!

We just had an old-fashioned thunderstorm roll through. A pretty good one with lots of thunder and lightning, and I shut my computer down (for its safety) and went to sit in the glass-surrounded sunroom to enjoy it. It’s not often we have this kind of storm, and when we do it’s usually in the middle of the night. That’s another strange thing I can’t get used to here in New Jersey: a thunderstorm at 10 o’clock in the morning! I could hear the thunder long before the storm arrived, and it got as dark as night outside. Very creepy. When the rain finally started it was a cloudburst—I couldn’t even see the neighbor’s house across the street.

I took a photo of the radar after it had passed. If you look closely you’ll see a little pointer mark where our town is; just below the state line of New Jersey on the west side of that ominous red storm line! That’s what just went over us!

As I sat and took in the beauty of the storm, I felt the need to put down my thoughts. With the computer shut down I had to resort to pen and paper (gasp!). Here is what I wrote.

As I sit here in the sunroom surrounded on three sides by glass, we are experiencing a good old-fashioned thunderstorm. Something I’ve been craving for awhile. Lightning flashes all around me; thunder booms. Have you ever just sat and listened to thunder? Each clap is unique. Some are just a single earth-shatteringly loud BOOM! like those fireworks on the 4th of July that start out by being just an intense flash of light until the sound catches up and it ends with that amazingly loud BOOM! that you feel deep in your belly and shakes the ground beneath you. Very powerful. Others start fairly quietly and roll along seemingly forever until their sound just fades away in the distance, while others make a cracking sound that never amounts to much of anything.

Boy, I sure can type faster than I can write ...

Some people duck and take cover during thunderstorms, but I sort of relish in them (as long as they aren’t severe with hail or the lightning isn’t hitting too close). There is something exciting about the charged air they carry along with them. I know, I’m weird. Maybe I can thank my father for that. When I was little he used to hold me up to the window during a storm so we could watch the lightning display together so I wouldn’t be afraid. I remember it all so clearly; the Paul Revere curtains hanging at the living room window, the forks of lightning and the thunder, the warm secure feeling of being in my father’s arms.

The storm has been over us for about twenty minutes and Mother Nature is really having a good time out there—quite the drama queen today. But now the distance between the flash and the thunder is getting further apart and the storm is moving off, although it’s still raining.

When I booted the computer up again I saw that during that twenty minute storm it had put down .65 inches of rain. Right now our rain gauge stands at almost one inch. Not bad. There was a very wet and bedraggled turkey hunkered underneath the big oak in the front yard when I came into the computer room. Smart turk!  We are supposed to get more thunderstorms later this afternoon ... we’ll see. I do love a stormy day! How about you?