A Mint

Wild mint is fun to find and harvest. There's a type that's poisonous, with white flowers on tall stems, but roll a stem between your fingers, and if the stem is square -- you will feel how it's square! -- you can have free mint leaves. There are six kinds of mint in Missouri. Although this is ordinary "ground ivy" (Glechoma hederacea) it smells wonderful. I found it creekside, in the hollow of a tree stump, its tree gnawed down by beavers long ago.

 

I had made a favorite India-themed pink lentil soup, and the recipe recommends a garnish of mint leaves. In winter I do without. How lucky I am in spring to simply walk down the road, onto the path I cut, and there was my mint, presented artistically for nobody's eyes ever, unless I happened to seek it out.

Dogwood Winter

A "Dogwood Winter" is a cold snap after the dogwoods have bloomed, usually mid- to-late April. Surprise, it snowed here on April 20, flakes wet and splotchy enough so I preferred to photograph snow on my redbuds rather than the dogwoods 50 feet farther away. I believe April 20 is the latest snow I've seen in Missouri. (In upstate New York I watched snow fall on May 6.) But I had to go out again anyway to brush snow off the satellite dish.

Two hours after the snow ended it was all gone. I didn't dream our Dogwood Winter: This morning we broke the temperature record for an all-time low with 30 degrees. The previous record: 32 degrees in 1904.

 

Naturally -- naturally! -- I had an appointment at 8 a.m. and had to pull out the winter coat and pair of gloves (on Monday, we'd had 72-degree weather). There's a "blackberry winter" that according to the Farmer's Almanac comes even later to the Midwest and South in spring. Hope we don't have one.

And by the way, at 2:30 a.m. on April 20 we also had a little earthquake. It didn't wake me, though, not like the one in April 2008.

Restoring A View: Before and After

Behold "before" and "after" pictures of an area of property that allows a view of our shaded double waterfall -- if, and only if, one will cut away a screen of invasive honeysuckle shrubs growing in the half mud-half sand where two nameless streams converge. The site is only yards away from where the confluence quietly empties into LaBarque Creek, beginning its long journey toward the Mississippi River.

How to accomplish this? One shoulders loppers, then crawls, then chop-chop-chops, thinking the labor is really a fool's errand because the honeysuckles will grow back, but a clear view of the double falls (operating best after a rain) is worth conserving. While I was cutting close to the rocks, I was privileged to see the very last of the ice and the first of the fiddlehead ferns. This is one of the lowest spots on the property, a micro-climate, even in hot summer noticeably cooler than anywhere else -- and in spring and fall, has breath that's sweet and positively chilly.

And of course I left standing the native Missouri trees.

I could go back and do a bit more, but I've adopted a philosophy that many male types I know practice with insouciance: 80 percent is honorable; it's good enough.

The Picture of Happiness

I pined for a Nikon camera, nothing fancy or weighty, just a point-and-shoot with a few bells and whistles, and around 2004 finally bought a Nikon Coolpix and loved it: great optics, a 4x zoom lens, a close-up option for intense nature photography; and I got a tripod, too, and with them snapped hundreds of gorgeous nature photos, turning some into calendars custom-made and lovingly sent 1) to my parents, who hated the calendars; one year I included a dramatic, unbeatable photo of a blacksnake, and photos of turtles, and close-ups of mushrooms, and a green bug on a pink flower; I had no clue they'd be so repelled and offended, and 2) the couple who lived on this Divine property just before me. They liked the calendars.

I hung the camera by its strap near the door, to grab when I saw deer, turkeys, sunrises, orioles & that. I'd owned other, heavier cameras, SLRs with multiple lenses. The Nikon felt so portable and good in my hand! It had a 256MB memory card, and no wireless capability. Around 2013 or 2014 its electronic shutter got gummy. It was not worth the repair. Besides, we now all carried cellphones with built-in cameras.

Realized when trying to photograph the Moon the other night how I missed the little Nikon and steady tripod mount. (The difference between amateur and wow-factor photos is the use of a tripod. )

 

Often I had thought to sell or throw away my tripod but didn't. Someday, someday. It waited patiently in its box for years until today, when I mounted on it a used Nikon Coolpix, purchased on eBay, one configured and operated very much and delightfully like the old one. Could have bought the latest model for about four times the money. Decided to see if I could again love photography enough to haul a tripod around and sit in the cold to wait for the ideal light, or wait an hour  to snap the just-right bluebird photo.

 

The 256MB memory card is now 8GB and that will be nice. Yes, to download I'll have to run a firewire between the camera and computer. So.

Here is my setup to take a photo of tonight's blue moon. I could just cry for all the time I missed my former Nikon camera, and for joy that I have one again.

Bunny 2020

This bunny is in its Eden. Always as the sun sets, a couple of bunnies enjoy dining on the part of the lawn kept mown. The day had been one of those stunningly blue and temperate June days (I think today is another). For a while this property was low on bunnies, but this year young ones were born, too young to know enough to run away from me. They grew up. So I know bunnies are thriving as they should. The second bunny ran as I approached, so this one looks lonely, but I assure you it isn't.

Territory

It's a young turtle if its shell is vividly and clearly painted and shines, and surely a young one if it's crossing a road, likely in search of a place claim-able as territory. With great self-possession -- animals seem to have more confidence as humans have less -- it held its pose as I sidled near and snapped the camera. In the background is my own home, my own protective shell. So this is a picture of what's important to us both.

On this walk just a few minutes before, yards down the road, I met a pencil-slender baby copperhead snake lounging on the gravel in the exact spot copperheads in summer quite often lounge on the gravel. Recalling well the first time I met a copperhead -- full-sized -- at that spot and nearly stepped on it, on every walk year-round I glance down at that point on the road, and step lightly. Perhaps I bring them into being by imagining them there. Happy summer solstice.

The Christmas Miracle

Hairy-stemmed poison ivy grew all over the garage's northern wall and wasn't visible until the foliage was gone. Ivy overgrowing a structure not only crawls all over it, but pulls with incredible strength. It can pull whole trees down or part the stones in a stone wall. It was gathering under the garage roof in a conspiracy. The ivy had to go. And nobody else was gonna cut it down, so it was on me.

Trouble was, I could barely move or think, being so burnt out from work it was too much effort to raise my arms overhead, much less pick up a cutting tool. Was limping around. Couldn't stay standing for long. Couldn't think of words, either. I had healing to do, but how? Stupid woo-woo advice from the Internet said sleep, meditation, yoga, little or no Internet (the net generates decision fatigue), and replace the Internet with books.

Okay, then: waking shockingly late, exhausted on waking, feeling corny every minute of the yoga DVD and meditation app, working as much as able (about 1/4 the normal), drinking coffee (it didn't help), and the rest of the time reading, starting with McCullough's hefty Harry Truman biography. Sprinkle in a few meetings or meals with friends and four days of cat-sitting. Three weeks and this morning I get out of bed saying, "This is the day I tape down that one carpet" and even before morning coffee it was done, and I still had energy. With temperatures in the high 50s I dressed in long sleeves and long pants and gloves, and bushwhacked behind the garage (all overgrown) to the ivy-covered garage wall and started severing the vines.

Took about an hour. It was a miracle: I still had energy. Severed some honeysuckle vines along the lane. Still had some energy. Shampooed and showered in case any poison ivy touched me. While on the bedroom floor putting on sneakers I saw some spaces all dusty and cobwebby. Dragged out the vacuum and vacuumed them up. Then -- then! -- I still had enough energy to cook a baked potato and an egg in butter. And eat them! And then write this post!

It's a miracle! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, blessed solstice.

Rainbow Chaser

Thursday afternoon's high winds became a brief thunderstorm about 7 p.m., and as I drove the last lap home across floodplain, a tall, vivid rainbow appeared, visible end to end. Excited, I found and wildly drove up the wrong side of a back road leading to a vista on a hilltop, scrambled out of the car and photographed the rainbow, by then fading. The chase itself was the day's highlight.

There followed a purple and lemon sunset so awesome I thanked God I was alive and outdoors to see it. During some sunsets, I'm indoors, working. It's a crime and I know it. On my one visit to the Grand Canyon I joined the people anticipating and gathering to watch the sunset as an event, as a one-time-only performance, and thought then, "This is the right way to honor a day of our one and only life." Having finished the drive home, I saw the sunset had changed its key, creating a Thomas Kincaid painting of my own dwelling. Sometimes I look at it thinking, "I live here? People can live in only one place. This is my home? The home I've chosen for my one and only life? How -- how awesome!"

When I moved here I was reverent about sunrise and sunset, grasses and moonlight, things that in the city are in artificially short supply. Thursday's rainbow invited me (and everyone) to renew that reverence, and the sunset sent me this letter, written with light.

The Old-Timey Screens

The screened porch is 50 percent of the reason I live here, and I'd patched its holes for years but last summer so many that fresh screening is this season's home improvement priority. But I had no idea how. "Old-timey hardware stores will do it," I heard. "Bring 'em in by Thursday," they said at Cotton's Ace, where I learned why my patches never held well, and why critter claws so easily pierced the screens -- they are fiberglass. That means too the screening is not 80 years old although their frames are. I ordered aluminum replacement screening.

In the Tuesday night cold by the light of the lone yellow porch bulb I unhooked seven of the eight screens (the photo shows five) and for the first time pulled them down. Painted, repainted, nailed on, chewed, their varying sizes did not fit into the car so Wednesday I drove three round trips to the store, but it was the first day of spring and I was jubilant and look forward to driving three round trips back.

I'd previously asked the price and thought they'd said .35 per square inch of screen. With 10,007 square inches of screen the total was $3,527 or thereabouts -- shocked, I wondered if perhaps I was mistaken, as I am far more often than I think-- and in fact it's more like .035 per square inch.

The man who did the paperwork (lots) said that the trim holding the screening onto the frame was fragile and might have to be broken to remove the old screens and staples and I said fine, I'd pay as long as the trim was replaced. Oh, did I mention I'm paying? This is my project -- not a necessity but a "lifestyle" choice -- while the landlord contemplates installing new carpeting in the Divine living room and bedroom. It's a more than fair exchange, in my view.  (While they install the carpet I can live on the porch.) You might pout and say "You ought to make them pay at least some," but I appreciate beyond words having a job and being able to restore something so enchanting as the porch, my box seat on nature and the seasons.

Please Re-Lease Me

October 1 came and went and no new lease arrived in the mail, and the landlord's office said somebody else had to decide, and meanwhile I feared that the delay meant eviction.

Months went by. I kept paying rent thinking, where would I go?  I guess I could be happy anywhere, I said, knowing that each day I woke up in a tiny (affordable) apartment or trailer or shack, even with better carpeting than now, I'd be heartbroken: 100 acres, gone! Porch, lizards, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, crocuses and mushrooms, firebowl and two-car garage -- gone! I couldn't live -- I couldn't make it! (Oh, come on, I thought. This is not Syria. You could rent a two-bedroom in the part of the city that only looks like Syria.)

Crocuses appeared March 12 this year.

After five months I learned that the people who'd routinely mailed the lease had retired and the new employees were months behind on their work, and the lease was now ready to sign, all backdated to October.

But modified, so that every year the lease will renew automatically.

So relieved I nearly fainted. I will probably stay here the rest of my life, I thought, and began making plans.

Scrapers Gonna Scrape

Winter came early, with snow on November 8, and then an actual 4 inches of snow in this area this past week. When the snow ceases, the snowplow comes. The plow is a benefit for tenants, and I am grateful because, frankly, I have tried to shovel 100 yards of snow but every time, I failed.

Once, before the snowplow, a 50-pound bag of ice-melting salt was delivered here after a blizzard, left in the middle of the lane in front of my house. I could not move the bag, or even drag it, so I slit it open and carried the salt one shovelful at a time downhill to highway's edge where the most treacherous ice forms. After I did that 20 times, the bag of salt diminished and I dragged it away from the middle of the lane so the car could get out.

The plow is so much better, and the plowman courteous enough (now that I have asked) to clear the space in front of the garage so I can back the car out, but his blade scrapes the last gravel from the non-paved lane, leaving thigh-high drifts of gravel and snow, and soupy mud as the snow melts. I call it the "Slop-o-Rama." In front of the garage it looks like this.

Puff and Blow

I was raking while barefoot because barefoot links us with Earth energies and all that, when I saw puffballs: One fresh (beige, about 3 inches in diameter) and one blown (the brown, tattered one on top) and rejoiced because I had thought the season was over. Promptly I obtained a paring knife and bag and harvested my dinner, provided that when I sliced it lengthwise it was pure white inside. It was. Puffers (in this case, Calvatia gigantea) barely have stems at all. When dried-out and brown their heads explode volcanically, sending spores far and wide.

Put on my hunter-orange cap and scoured the nearest quarter of the Divine Woods, all gold-leaf and black hieroglyph, for the same sort of prize, not finding a darned thing, and then I looked down and in the crevices of a log were whole colonies of puffers, little ones, also fresh.

These I scooped up not to eat but to propagate. All along the walk home I crumbled, threw and dropped the pieces, hoping for more puffers next fall. Not tired enough, I tried another trail and found another large puffer, not so fresh. This too I crumbled up and tossed hither and yon. May there be puffballs, a lot, next year. Tomorrow, after the hunters leave the area, hike into deeper woods to seek  more. To cook, slice them lengthwise, always making sure they're pure solid white inside, and saute in butter.

Post-Season on the Black River

Camped out at the private Twin Rivers Landing on the Black River for two nights, on a writers' retreat with seven others. This area, the Arcadia Valley, is gorgeous, and will be even more so in a week or so when the foliage turns. Quite remote; 68 miles as the crow flies was more than 100 miles on the road. Perfect weather; we might as well have been indoors as out. Only two other campsites out of about 30 or so were occupied. It really is the post-season but they made an exception for us.

Mostly I either wrote in a notebook in the shade beneath a tree, supine in a zero-gravity chair; or we sat around the campfire with skewers and weenies, reading each other stories, recommending books, websites, and organizations. Saturday night I took a long walk by starlight; no moon, because the New Moon was Monday. This is sunrise on Sunday, one of the very few photos I took. The light was powder-pink.

What struck me is how I took for granted that I could take home my dew-sodden Kelty tent and tent-fly and lay them on my gravel to dry before packing them. The city dwellers had no room to do this. Draping the tent over a car parked on the street was not possible. Didn't have floor space indoors. Didn't have a back yard. Couldn't hang it from a window. That was once me, in a studio apartment. . . I camped state parks often, renting a car when I had to, because the city stifled me. . . How did I cope? I don't recall. I know only that I am blessed. On October 1, I have lived on the Divine property for 17 unbroken years.

Out of Square

C'est fini.

Need I add that the Divine Cabin's kitchen floor was not only gouged and discolored but terribly out of square, its surface lumpy, with fussy millwork around its three doorways and 80-year-old baseboards seriously warped? And that it wasn't possible to move either the oven or fridge? One night my neighbor Terri and I finished laying the self-adhesive tiles on the kitchen floor -- Terri with the skills and tools from crafting, able to custom-cut the odd shapes to the millimeter. I mostly lay flat on the floor waiting to be handed the puzzle pieces and sticking them into place.

Here is the finished product. Very nice. Now I need a threshold. I bought one yesterday, and a hacksaw to cut it to the (odd, weird) 35.5 inches, and installed it, but it turned out I needed not a "bull-nosed" threshold but a square-nosed one which can be glued because beneath the floor is concrete and screws cannot be drilled into it. Besides that, there is only fine-tipped caulking to do, and then one last big, daring DIY.

It's White-Trash Repair Month

I truly loved July but felt something sad around its edges until I realized it was my beloved house, The Divine Cabin.

After 17 years without interior paint or new carpets or a working fireplace or insulation in the winter, it is, frankly, shabby. Squirrels occupied my screened porch after ripping holes in now-fragile screens worn by decades of weather -- ragged holes too extensive for normal patching. They chewed some of the wooden frames to bits. I couldn't enjoy my porch because squirrels ran around on it, destroying it, and I didn't see what I could do.

The dishwasher fritzed. The essential housekeeping tool, it saves hours of trying to wash and rinse dishes and pots in a sink the size of a salad bowl. When I could't revive it with fervent prayer and fasting, I had to unload it and do dishes in the yard. Fortunately it is summertime. Last time I phoned for dishwasher repair help, in 2014, I was jeered. "Aw, just run a couple cups of C.L.R. through it," drawled the Maytag Repair Man who is supposed to be so lonely. I called again and he made other addle-pated excuses for not coming. I figured he was on drugs. Finally I repaired it myself. This time I knew I would have to repair it again, and the problem is electrical. About which I know nothing except the red wire goes in the red slot.

Some corners and edges never get clean. They should be stripped of paint and refinished. I tried that with a cupboard door and the bathroom door. It took days and I sanded by hand because the garage has no electricity. The paint layers were a history going all the way back to lead paint and I couldn't help but breathe dust and chemicals.

The kitchen floor is the saddest case. It records all the bootheels and gouges laid into it by my husband, who died in 2009. The stained grout in the shower stall is also sad. Call the landlord? I did. They no longer bother with cosmetic improvements. If it's livable, they're not changing it. They also told me, this year for the very first time, I should be cleaning my own gutters and throwing broken tree limbs off the roof. I have never once been on the roof.

I had already bought, dumped and raked 1000 pounds of rock to make my own path through grass I couldn't find a cutter for. Not normally a DIY sort of person I finally had to tell myself, once again, the old refrain: "Ain't nobody gonna do it for you." And didn't I move here to be self-reliant?

In the coming days I will show you how I did something the hell about it, one item at a time. Today: the porch screen. There's a closeup of some of the ripped screen and frame damage, and also my solution. I patched the holes as well as I could and bolted hardware cloth in place. It looks nowhere near as horrid as I imagined. Measuring, cutting, fitting, finding wood screws and those ring things that go around the wood screws, gluing back as much wood as was salvageable, took an entire day, from cool 7 a.m. to hot 3 p.m. But now I can enjoy the porch.

These Rocks Speak Dust

This is what 1000 pounds  or $130 worth of gravel looks like after I made a path to the road. The planned task is not complete but a spare $130 it will bring it closer to finishing.

Wore a breathing mask when I poured this last 360 lbs. Hosed the rocks to keep the dust down. Still inhaled some gravel dust, but less than before, and this time was further educated when I saw the coating of gravel dust over the car. The whole car, back to front, a thin even coating. I understood the nature of this dust now. These rocks speak dust. And feeling gritty all over meant I should shower it off right away and wash the clothes.

This project hallowed this June that slipped away so quickly, and will recall this hallowed month whenever I look at it.

I Travel for Gravel

Before

240 pounds later

The gravel apron in front of the Divine Cabin over the years has been scraped and washed away and grass grows there now hiding ticks and chiggers that bite me, and for four years we have asked the landlord for fresh gravel, because the road needs some too, but it never came. In despair I phoned the gravel mine and they'd deliver a cubic yard for $215, $75 of that delivery charge, and dump-truck the gravel in a pile as tall as I and I'd have to hire someone with a spreader or spend years spreading it shovelful by shovelful, alone.

So every summer more bugs bit me and I didn't even have to go into the woods but simply step outside. Mowing helped, but now I haven't a mower and have asked the landlord to supply one as the lease requires. They don't want to. Phoning mowing professionals got me estimates I felt ashamed I could not pay.

It occurred to me, in my misery, to buy and spread my own gravel and choke off the grass, solving at once the chigger and the mowing and the apron problem, and went to Home Depot, a 30-mile round trip, because they would load my car for me, and bought 8 bags of 30 lbs. each for a total of $31. I thought it was named "Viagra stone" (a dirty mind is a perennial resource). Said nothing of this to the teenager dragging the 240-lb. cart out to my car and loading it, as I could not. As an employee he may not take a tip. But I said, "You're not taking it; I'm giving it," and dropped money in his apron pocket.

Doesn't it look like Viagra stone?

With my own labor I could buy five more such loads before hitting $215. Hefting each bag I dropped them at strategic intervals on the apron, slit the bags, dumped and raked a while and was pleased as heck with my result but there was much more apron to cover.

Now I had big plans. About to return to Home Depot to reload I thought to try the nearby Walmart. An elderly employee said to go to the checkout if I wanted their bags of gravel, but the garden area checkout, at 8 p.m., was closed, and the young employee said he did not work in this section and could not cashier, so I just went home.

I thought it would amuse me to shop at every gravel-selling retail around here and score them on how well I was served. My work on the apron is satisfying as a long-lasting solution to a frustrating, expensive problem.

Janitor of Eden

After two weeks away, the first thing to do is empty the mousetraps. Very fortunately there was only one mouse cadaver, fresh thank God, because had it been two weeks old it'd be stuck to the floor. I'd left May 20, just when there's so much to do to ensure a good summer here. Like:

• repair the porch screen. My sworn enemies, the squirrels, chewed through it and gnawed the plastic gasket from the metal step-can I store those delicious sunflower seeds in -- but failed to get to the seeds. Nyah, nyah.
• buy basil and dill plants and soil for repotting into the pots they'll occupy all summer, pots carried into full sun every morning and sheltered next to the house at nightfall, because otherwise the squirrels overturn and uproot them out of pure spite.
• clean and refill hummingbird feeders. I almost didn't want to leave for two weeks because the empty feeders would disappoint the hummingbirds, but I'm hoping my extra-sweet nectar recipe will persuade them to return and trust me; I don't intend to leave them again.
• retrieve the seed feeder from the underbrush where raccoons had dragged and left it; soap and rinse it, dry it in the sun. Acquire a poison-ivy hickey on my left leg.
• greet new young turtles and rabbits who have no idea I live here too.
• witness a high-speed chase: Miss Turkey in hot pursuit of a hefty blacksnake sidewinding itself across the grass at top speed and beneath the propane tank, thus winning that round.
• pull and dry the spring onions before they form heads.
• refill those clever little outdoor mouse-poison dispensers with green-turquoise blocks of mouse poison. They work; they've cut the indoor mouse war by 75 percent.
• approach the bluebird box to clean it. Yes, one must clean one's bluebird box. I didn't want to. Last time I looked, the nest held three baby chickadees and a baby bluebird. This is unusual. I feared finding the nest holding one or more dead. With gloved hands I unhooked the box and pulled out the nest. It was empty. Everyone had fledged! I was overjoyed.
• inspect the forest floor where the summer mushrooms grow. Despite an inch of rain, found nothing. It's still quite early in the season. On the way, saw butterflies enjoying the blossoming milkweed.
• check blackberry brambles for incipient blackberries, due in about three weeks. There are indeed little blackberry bullets. Last year's drought meant we had no crop. This year I hope for better.
• buy at the fruit and vegetable stand every sort of fresh tasty thing: beets, apples, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, berries, mushrooms, red onion, bananas, peppers, grapefruit, romaine -- to refill the fridge and to purify myself after two weeks away. And oh, yes, buy a bottle of wine, a rose, but I won't admit to that.
• clean the picnic table; apply a tablecloth.

All this activity was joyful. Give me a new computer stand and I'm in Eden! I'm so glad to be home, among the plants and creatures.

Breakfast Alfresco

"What would be fun?" I asked myself and could not come up with an answer. This is very abnormal because I think everything is fun, from hikes to mud to old trucks to blizzards. How else could it be, living in the world's most wonderful place?

When nothing came to mind, I tried another tactic: If I was in love, what would I be doing right now at 8 a.m.?

-I'd be serving breakfast to the loved one.
-I'd make this breakfast from the very best I had, to be the best and most memorable breakfast in the world, all for love.
-I'd skimp on nothing nor would I care about calories, because my loved one is perfect as is and thinks I am perfect too. So I'd use real butter and the works and serve enough to fuel the loved one all morning long.
-I wouldn't care about the number of bowls, pans, dishes, paper towels, or anything.
-I'd go to great lengths, even trotting everything outside to the red picnic table a total of four round trips, to have breakfast in the ideal quintessential vividly green July morning, the grass perfectly mown so any chiggers would have to leap really high to bite me behind the knees.

With day-old French bread, plus eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon, syrup and some (uncured, excellent, local) bacon I'd frozen and forgotten about, I fixed the imaginary loved one the best possible breakfast and served it in the shade beneath the twin oaks. Then I ate it, in the company of one bumblebee attracted by the fragrance of syrup. Oh yes, memorable. I ought to do this every day for a year.

Gift Wrapped

A full inch of rain had barely woken or greened anything because it's been so dry. Dry means no mushrooms, not since late April, and no chanterelles for sure -- normally the woods is paved with big ruffly yellow ones, and my lawn, when soaked in summer, is host to as many as 17 different fascinating Missouri fungi. Today I saw for the first time that the juniper bush under which grew, annually in autumn, 20 pounds of rare Hen of the Woods 'shroom has been pulled out: sigh.

The walk led me to the former mushroom capital of my woods where there wasn't even an LBM ("little brown mushroom," as in "Never eat little brown mushrooms") to be seen; it simply hasn't been wet enough. As for any hunter, some years are plentiful and some not. I turned to retrace my steps and saw these Dreamsicle heads of Chicken of the Woods, beautifully fresh, ribboned with orange, yellow and white. I took the smaller head, about the size of a cabbage (see the glove, at the very bottom, I put in the photo, for scale) and within half an hour the fronds were roasting to a crisp in my toaster oven preparing for my Sunday guest.

Why didn't I take the big Chicken, or both? Didn't need it, and conservation means don't rip everything up out of the earth. Why not take the big Chicken and freeze it for later? Freezing fungi dehydrates the best out of it.