Blogger a bit too busy to blog

This has been a busy summer so far and I expect it will continue to be the same until it's over and beyond.  Readers who have been with me for a while saw that last summer was what I think of as a "building year". I spent a lot of time digging out paths and covering with landscape fabric and wood chips, building my $40 patio, described in a few of my earlier posts, and of course starting my beehive.

This year is being spent maintaining!  And this year, I am needing to maintain two homes and a school garden.  Sadly, I need to spend several hours to get the school garden in shape for September.  I've gotten there about as often as I can, given the other maintenance that I've been doing but still feel like it's my orphan garden. The maintenance I'm speaking of has mostly been in gardens although I've spent time getting my Maine house back in shape and getting tasks done that it needed. 

My Maine home, rented the last few years, became vacant at the end of June.  That is two years of virtually no garden work occurring so I have spent time each weekend bringing those gardens back.  I also had the front porch refinished and trim painted so that it looks inviting again.  I'll snap some photos next weekend.

I bought this house in 2004 and it had no landscaping at all except for a few piddly shrubs.  It had an above ground pool there which I had taken out when I bought it.  That left me with this big bare grass-free circle area in the back yard.  I turned that into a pond and garden. Here is the back yard the next year where I used two existing trellis's and a board to make an archway, put a few chairs there and a birdbath and a few shrubs and called it a patio.

Back yard, year 2005

Back yard, year 2007

A few years later, the area looked like what you see above.  The pond is about 8' in diameter and about 3-4 feet deep, which I dug myself.  I had a load of field stone delivered because southern Maine, in my area, is all sand so it's easy digging. I used the field stone to trim the pond and get somewhat of a path from the side door down to the pond.  The path was never finished though.  I ran out of field stone and just never got around to it. Then I got some pea stone to make a walkway around the pond and added the outer plantings.  So there are plantings around the pond, a path and then more plantings.

Back yard August 2013 --  slightly tilted shot...not the garden's fault

This weekend, I will take another photo from the same spot so that you can see how things have matured in this section of the yard.  It really looks like I imagined it would as I was building it, forming a little private retreat in the midst of nature.  With the addition of a little waterfal to the pond, it's so peaceful to sit and watch nature all around. It's a lovely spot.  A glass of wine; a plate of cheese...frogs croaking, bees humming, butterflies circling...what could be better?

Today's mushroom find - Polyporus umbellatus

Like I said at the start, this blog would end up being about  more than beekeeping.  I also have an interest in foraging and one item I love to forage is mushrooms.

I knew chanterelles were out because I picked a basket full last week in Southern Maine.  I have a few spots here in Southeastern Vermont too so I decided to take a walk and find some more.  I did find them in  my usual spots and also in one new spot so I grabbed them.  Most were a bit too old...they should have been picked several days ago. But they were still good enough to cook up and so that's what I did with them.  Then I froze them.

I've tried to dry chanterelles in the past but they get tough and chewy so I now will cook them in olive oil with a bit of butter until done...then freeze them. They are delicious after thawing and using.

But today's big find was this Polyporus umbellatus that I found on a slope in leaf debris and surrounded by various deciduous trees.  It looked like a Maitke but I knew it wasn't because of some various differences, including timing.  Maitke come in September, not early July.  Each leaflet looks like a little trumpet.  I guess someone else thought they looked like little umbrellas, hence the name.

 

The top mushrooms were perfect.  Towards the stem at the bottom, I could see insect damage.  But the top little "umbrellas" were clean and white and so I chopped them up and sauteed them in olive oil with a bit of butter for flavor.  Another delicious  mushroom...one I'd never found nor eaten. 

A Wiki entry says that these mushrooms have "Polyporus umbellatus may contain bioactive compounds with immunostimulating, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and hepatoprotective properties".

No one should ever eat a mushroom based on this blog.  Any mushroom you eat should be researched in depth to make sure that it's not poisonous.  If you haven't learned about mushrooms from experts, you should not ever try to eat them.  BE WARNED and HEED THIS WARNING.