Hills, Spruce, Fog,and Rain

© Aug '12     photo by smck

When you're happy, grey days are a needed flavour to your life - but when your mind is grey, drear days are as a burden to bend you down -

Contemplation

© 30 Sep '12    photo by smck

This is almost the same view as before but at just a bit larger scale in which you can see the roughness of this old and seasoned wood.  It is somewhat wet from soaking up rain but will dry quickly when I have split the rounds into 1/2s and then 1/4s and leave it stacked here, covered on top with a thin two foot wide piece of plywood until I have finished cutting in this area.  Later I will haul it back to my wood-rick near our house to split the larger pieces to nice stove size and stack it all again. This old dead wood burns well with little creosote output but the one main drawback is the 'dirtiness' of the bits of decaying exterior wood that litters the floor after every loading of the stove - when I do occasionally cut either a living tree or one that is newly deceased I always have a minor enjoyment of how little litter there is in handling the wood.  In general though it's load the stove - then sweep and vacuum around the stove. 

However when the stove is burning nicely with the flames flickering their hypnotic lantern show through the tempered glass doors and I am sitting in my comfortable chair with my book and my single-malt of the day, laze-ally enjoying the warmth on a bone cold winters day then the labour has been well played.   
 
I have to fess-up, that actually I drink much more tea than single-malt - but the single malt does fit right into the ambiance of the moment.

Possible Bag

© 30 Sep '12    photo by smck

In the early days of the American expansion westward into the mountains, the frontiersmen carried a kind of pack bag that they referred to as their 'Possible Bag'  - I assume that it was 'possible' that most anything they might have need of was in it.  Well here is my little green 'Possible Bag' - in the lower left corner, in which I carry my cell phone and camera.  As you can see I run a semi-managed woodlot in which I try never to cut any living tree.  And here is the results of my cutting wood-stove size pieces of a long dead Red Oak blow-down.

Chicken Mushroom - Laetiporus sulfureus

© 29 Sep '12    photo by smck

© 29 Sep '12    photo by smck

While cutting firewood in my little woodland area my eye was caught by the appealing colours of this small cluster of Polyspores.  Luckily I had my trusty camera (along with my cell phone for emergencies) with me in a small carry case and so quickly snapped a few pictures.  Later at the house I tentatively identified these in my field guide as the Chicken Mushroom - a 'choice' edible.  I have not done a spore test and so must say that this identification is truly tentative.  

Breakfast Morsel

© Sep '12    photo by smck

Walking up the sidewalk I noticed a group of mushrooms that had not been there the day before.  Taking a closer look I could see that it was already being devoured by a large slug so I went into the house for my trusty camera.  But alas the slug, satiated I presume, had moved on.   I did not bother to try and identify the remains of his meal but I did reflect on the fact that numerous animals can eat deadly poisonous (to humans) mushrooms with no ill affect.  There have been instances of humans eating turtles that had previously dined on some deadly mushroom with the result being that even though the turtle had survived the poison, the poison was still viable and the human was stricken - second hand so to speak.