I am addicted to crystallised ginger and I don't care!
While I was waiting on the bus stop (for a bus that was exceedingly late), a middle-aged Iranian bloke started talking to me (he was bored as he had been waiting a long time - by the time the bus arrived he had been waiting an hour). It turned out that he was interested in knowing more about my pentagram ring. He showed me his ring which had two pentagrams on it with what looked like some Arabic writing in the middle. It turned out that he was a Bahai and we got talking about his beliefs. He asked me if I knew anything about The Bahai Faith and I explained that I'd had some Bahai friends at university. When I told him that one of my Bahai friends at university had been originally from the same city as me but had gone to live abroad after graduating, he asked me her name it and it turned out that he knew her. Apparently she has moved back here. Isn't it a small world to think that I could get chatting to some random bloke and find out that he has met someone I was friends with a decade ago!! The two pentagrams represent the Bab and Bahaullah (basically the founders of the Bahai Faith).
While in the garden the other day, I noticed that a decidedly fat bumblebee getting in a tizzy. It seemed to be having trouble flying. It kept trying to take off but each time instead of soaring into flight it seemed to sort of jump up and then fall over onto its back, where it waved its legs about and made angry buzzing noises until it had succeeded in righting itself whereupon it tried again and ended up on its back again. It was hilarious to watch.
When he was still a child, my little brother used to have a habit of picking up bumblebees and placing them onto flowers. Unfortunately, one day one of them stung him and after that he left them alone.
In October, I plan to spend a week at my parents' house. They are going to go off to Devon for a week while I stay at their house and look after the dog.
This calls for a gratuitous links to pictures of wild mushrooms...
The Shaggy Ink Cap
The Parasol Mushroom
The Blewit
The Cep
When I was 6 my mum gave me a copy of "Wild Flowers of Britain" by Roger Phillips for my birthday and it had a big impact on my life. Since then I've avidly bought other books by Roger Phillips ("Mushrooms & Other Fungi of Great Britain & Europe" being one of my favourites) and I have a small pile of books concerning the plants, fungi and creatures of the natural world.
Most of the people I meet don't know the names of most of the plants around them and often people don't even want to know the names of plants around them. To people like that, plants are just green stuff which looks nice but which, for them, fulfils the same role in the natural world that wallpaper does in the home and wild mushrooms are all imagined to be toadstools to be treated with suspicion or even stomped on in a mindless attempt at preventing them from propagating. If you try persuading such a person like that to try eating puffballs or ink caps they think that you are mad ("Oh no! I only eat mushrooms that come from a supermarket" is an actual comment that one acquaintance once said to me). This is a mentality that I find it hard to understand. From childhood I was encouraged to take an interest in these things it has remained an interest throughout my life.
I found that when I learned to identify the plants and fungi that were all around me, I started to see the natural world in more detail. This is because, in order to be able to identify which plants are which, you have to take a closer look, to examine the leaves and flowers etc. You start to see things you'd not previously noticed and something as commonplace as a lawn is transformed from a uniform mass of green into a riot of different herbs all pressing shoulders together as they compete for space.
When this is combined with an awareness of whether a particular plant is edible and what its traditional uses were (e.g. meadowsweet for headaches and fevers, coltsfoot as an expectorant, white deadnettle of catarrh, dandelion for the liver and marigold for bites and burns) it makes for a much richer day-to-day experience of the natural world (it even transforms one's experience of walking down the street because, all of the scraggly little weeds that one sees squeezing up through cracks in the pavement are suddenly so much more interesting).
During my daily train commutes I am slowly getting the hang of identifying plants from afar. Normally I identify plants by taking a close look so that I can examine the flowers, leaves etc. This isn't possible from the train. All I can see from the train is a purple blob or a green blob or whatever whizzing by (ok it depends how close the plant is to the train - the ones that are growing on the adjacent tracks can be seen in a reasonable amount of detail), but I am learning to see the overall shape if the plant. There appears to be an interesting collection of plants growing on or near the railways. Among others, I have spotted Evening Primrose, Meadowsweet, Vervain, Fennel, Vipers' Bugloss, St John's Wort and Meadow Cranesbill (Cranesbills and Storksbills are Britain's indigenous Geraniums and have a very different appearance from the tropical geraniums which everyone buys at the garden centre). Not very exciting for most people I suppose but bags of fun for me because I am into plants.
So is anybody else interested in wild mushrooms or do you all think I am a weirdo?
Well, that's all folks. Byeeee, for now.
While I was waiting on the bus stop (for a bus that was exceedingly late), a middle-aged Iranian bloke started talking to me (he was bored as he had been waiting a long time - by the time the bus arrived he had been waiting an hour). It turned out that he was interested in knowing more about my pentagram ring. He showed me his ring which had two pentagrams on it with what looked like some Arabic writing in the middle. It turned out that he was a Bahai and we got talking about his beliefs. He asked me if I knew anything about The Bahai Faith and I explained that I'd had some Bahai friends at university. When I told him that one of my Bahai friends at university had been originally from the same city as me but had gone to live abroad after graduating, he asked me her name it and it turned out that he knew her. Apparently she has moved back here. Isn't it a small world to think that I could get chatting to some random bloke and find out that he has met someone I was friends with a decade ago!! The two pentagrams represent the Bab and Bahaullah (basically the founders of the Bahai Faith).
While in the garden the other day, I noticed that a decidedly fat bumblebee getting in a tizzy. It seemed to be having trouble flying. It kept trying to take off but each time instead of soaring into flight it seemed to sort of jump up and then fall over onto its back, where it waved its legs about and made angry buzzing noises until it had succeeded in righting itself whereupon it tried again and ended up on its back again. It was hilarious to watch.
When he was still a child, my little brother used to have a habit of picking up bumblebees and placing them onto flowers. Unfortunately, one day one of them stung him and after that he left them alone.
In October, I plan to spend a week at my parents' house. They are going to go off to Devon for a week while I stay at their house and look after the dog.
This calls for a gratuitous links to pictures of wild mushrooms...
The Shaggy Ink Cap
The Parasol Mushroom
The Blewit
The Cep
When I was 6 my mum gave me a copy of "Wild Flowers of Britain" by Roger Phillips for my birthday and it had a big impact on my life. Since then I've avidly bought other books by Roger Phillips ("Mushrooms & Other Fungi of Great Britain & Europe" being one of my favourites) and I have a small pile of books concerning the plants, fungi and creatures of the natural world.
Most of the people I meet don't know the names of most of the plants around them and often people don't even want to know the names of plants around them. To people like that, plants are just green stuff which looks nice but which, for them, fulfils the same role in the natural world that wallpaper does in the home and wild mushrooms are all imagined to be toadstools to be treated with suspicion or even stomped on in a mindless attempt at preventing them from propagating. If you try persuading such a person like that to try eating puffballs or ink caps they think that you are mad ("Oh no! I only eat mushrooms that come from a supermarket" is an actual comment that one acquaintance once said to me). This is a mentality that I find it hard to understand. From childhood I was encouraged to take an interest in these things it has remained an interest throughout my life.
I found that when I learned to identify the plants and fungi that were all around me, I started to see the natural world in more detail. This is because, in order to be able to identify which plants are which, you have to take a closer look, to examine the leaves and flowers etc. You start to see things you'd not previously noticed and something as commonplace as a lawn is transformed from a uniform mass of green into a riot of different herbs all pressing shoulders together as they compete for space.
When this is combined with an awareness of whether a particular plant is edible and what its traditional uses were (e.g. meadowsweet for headaches and fevers, coltsfoot as an expectorant, white deadnettle of catarrh, dandelion for the liver and marigold for bites and burns) it makes for a much richer day-to-day experience of the natural world (it even transforms one's experience of walking down the street because, all of the scraggly little weeds that one sees squeezing up through cracks in the pavement are suddenly so much more interesting).
During my daily train commutes I am slowly getting the hang of identifying plants from afar. Normally I identify plants by taking a close look so that I can examine the flowers, leaves etc. This isn't possible from the train. All I can see from the train is a purple blob or a green blob or whatever whizzing by (ok it depends how close the plant is to the train - the ones that are growing on the adjacent tracks can be seen in a reasonable amount of detail), but I am learning to see the overall shape if the plant. There appears to be an interesting collection of plants growing on or near the railways. Among others, I have spotted Evening Primrose, Meadowsweet, Vervain, Fennel, Vipers' Bugloss, St John's Wort and Meadow Cranesbill (Cranesbills and Storksbills are Britain's indigenous Geraniums and have a very different appearance from the tropical geraniums which everyone buys at the garden centre). Not very exciting for most people I suppose but bags of fun for me because I am into plants.
So is anybody else interested in wild mushrooms or do you all think I am a weirdo?
Well, that's all folks. Byeeee, for now.
VIEW 16 of 16 COMMENTS
angel_ree:
Oy you....when are you going to update this thing? xxxx
little_sister:
You yourself are already a good, thoughtful writer. How are you? 