Olive
Today was a nice and grey day and after editing some suitcase photos and watching Fulham beat Wolves, Olive and I headed up into the woods. I have never seen a winter with so much water, and it was really wet with small rivulets running all over the place. Olive was in her element. She carried that birch log that is in front of her for most of the walk.
It is always a bit surprising to see something so colorful in the middle of winter. With all this water, it might just be a good year for mushrooming.
I wanted to do this post for Patty, who follows this site and recently asked for more pictures of the Olive. It’s probably a good time to mention that if you want to see more of her, I post on instagram as jonkcrispin. It is a nice outlet for me to put up photographs that I take with my phone. So check it out, and thanks for following.
Green / Big Stick
Now that the snow is all gone Olive and I have started spending more time in the woods. It rained most of the day yesterday, so it was pretty wet. Nice.
She is a total stick (or should I say log) girl. This could have been record size for her. She carried it for about half a mile.
I have been seeing a lot of green lately, and these fungi are just beautiful. Can anyone out there tell me what they are?
Tomato
This is the kind of thing that drives Cris a bit crazy. She finally insisted that I photograph this thing today and that I get it off the counter. Otherwise I would have let it go for a few more days. / She has been a vegetarian since college (her first BA at UC Chico) and has always said the one thing she missed was bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. This past summer I spent a great weekend with my college pal Seth Tibbott and bunch of my other Wittenberg friends. Seth was always a bit of a wild man and after he graduated he moved to the Northwest and started Turtle Island Foods, makers of the famous Tofurky. He still runs the company and when we were together he gave me some coupons. They make a tempeh product that resembles bacon and I picked up some to see how it was. Well, it is great, and Cris is thrilled to be able to have tempeh, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. So when I make them, there is usually some left-over tomato. I left this one on the counter overnight and by the next morning it started growing hair!
Well, hair like things with tiny black balls on the ends. I am quite good in keeping a tidy kitchen, but once in a while I do leave things out. I have seen a lot in my cooking life, but never anything like this. It certainly isn’t mold, but what in the wide wide world of sports is it?
Recent
I haven’t been posting lately, and I suspect one of the reasons is above. I am remembering that it takes a ton of work to have a puppy in the house.
The good news is that I am spending a ton of time in the woods with her. Any help on what this lot is?
Cris and I flew out of Boston early yesterday on our way to Denver. Hard to believe the above shot was taken in the airport. Looks like something out of someone’s private home in South Boston. / On our way up to the mountains we stopped in Arvada to see the house where my aunt Leora and uncle Herald lived, a place I have been visiting since a young child.
We are in Colorado for the wedding of one of Cristine’s grad students. Laura was a favorite of ours, and the nuptials are in Beaver Creek. It is beautiful here. The aspens are so lovely at this time of the year.
Fungi
We haven’t been walking up in the woods lately since in the summer the bugs are quite bad. This morning, Cris, our friend Kate, and I went for a stroll and were all interested in the number and variety of fungi that we saw. It has been a fairly wet summer, so I guess it is to be expected.
I have never seen these purple guys before.
They looked a bit slimy.
And this orange fellow appeared to be trailing some interesting goop.
I think this yellow one is some form of what my French friend Pol Corvez used to call “pets de nonne”.
After a while, I realized that I was shooting all of these mushrooms from above, so here is a side shot of this ↑one.
I have just enabled the url joncrispinposts. It should be working now, and I am hoping that there will be no problems. If you type in the old one (joncrispin.wordpress.com) it automatically redirects. If any of you have problems accessing the site, shoot me a note. And, as always, thanks for following.
Walk
Cris and the Pearl and I went up into the woods today. My sister Karen once told me what this ↑ little guy is called , but it didn’t stick with me. Any help, anyone? They are very delicate and tiny. / And due to all the recent rain, the fungi are everywhere.
I can’t remember seeing one like this ↑ before. It is very white.
Bray House
My neighbor Ken was on his way to Temple when he called and said that the light on the house at the bottom of our road was nice. I walked down and took this photo, mostly for him. It was a beautiful warm day, but as soon as the sun went down it got quite cold. When he gets home tonight, he will have this image in his email box. I really like the immediacy of photography.
Fungi
Cris and I were walking in Northampton today and I saw the fungus on the left growing on a tree. It was about 9 feet off the ground so I guessed at the framing. Just missed the right side. As I was taking the picture, a woman driving by got our attention and said there was a bigger one on Olive Street. So we drove over and saw the one on the right. I like the first one a bit better, but the one on Olive is huge.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
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