The variety in shape, form and colour of the fungi that fruit in our garden, usually during the wet and warmth of summer, is incredible. In addition to the mushroom/toadstool forms that were featured in last week’s post, some other forms of fungi include bracket, crust, puffball, bird’s nest, earthstar, stinkhorn, coral, jelly ears, saddle and cup.
Continue reading “Fungilorious: Four trees hosting fabulous fungi”
To my amazement, not everyone with gardens is delighted to find mushrooms and toadstools growing there. Of course many fungi are in gardens anyway, but they are usually unseen until circumstances are right for some species to seemingly spontaneously erupt into fruiting.
Continue reading “Mushrooms and toadstools in our garden”
A process of discovery is available to us if we learn to see what we usually overlook. But what we discover depends more on our own personal filters than on what we think we are looking at. Continue reading “Surprises and encouragements: Learning to see”
Going with the flow of nature is such a natural choice when it comes to gardening. Yet many of us were brought up in a tradition where gardens are controlled and orderly spaces. Continue reading “Live and let live gardening”
Once upon a time, not long ago and not far away, a White Starred Robin visited our garden pond. If I had the powers to understand the language of robins, what might I learn? Continue reading “The understorey: The tale of the White Starred Robin”
The meaning of the word “seedy” has come to be associated with being unkempt or shabby, rather than being fruitful or abundant, which was the original meaning of the word, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. We speak disparagingly of having “gone to seed”, and admiringly of being “in the flower of youth”. Perhaps this comes from the school of thinking that life is linear, rather than the tradition of thinking in terms cycles of life. Continue reading “Celebrating seediness”
letting nature back in 