* Mungo Says Bah * Bushcraft Blog

Wild Carrot and Blog Roundup - They All Did Catch My Eye

Here is a picture that I took of Wild Carrot:

"Wild carrot, bishop's lace, or Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota) is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, native to temperate regions of Europe and southwest Asia; domesticated carrots are cultivars of a subspecies, Daucus carota subsp. sativus.

Daucus carota is a variable biennial plant, usually growing up to 1 m tall and flowering from June to August. The umbels are claret-coloured or pale pink before they open, then bright white and rounded when in full flower, measuring 3-7cm wide with a festoon of bracts beneath; finally, as they turn to seed, they contract and become concave like a bird's nest. This has given the plant its British common or vernacular name, Bird's Nest. Very similar in appearance to the deadly Water Hemlock, it is distinguished by a mix of bi-pinnate and tri-pinnate leaves, fine hairs on its stems and leaves, a root that smells like carrots, and occasionally a single dark red flower in its center."

Here are a few blogs that I often peruse, and some of their posts that have caught my attention recently. Hope you enjoy their sites and plonk them into your RSS reader or bookmark them in your browsers...

The House and Other Arctic Musings has a high arctic barbeque with seal meat and heather.
Murat harvests birch bark in a very instructive tutorial.
Crow's twittered (and compiled and blogged) ongoing journey on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Winter Woman teaches us about the difference between Staghorn Sumac (yum, a nice cold drink from the flowers) and Poison Sumac (yech, exsquisite suffering).
Alaskan Explorer takes a picture of a bear.
Jim shares links for the latest and greatest Algonquin Park map.
Suds reminds us about the Canadian Canoe Museum.
American Bushman shares a few videos of Bertie Sømme's Spoon Carving Tutorials.
Chris Townsend (Hail to the Hiker) wonders what to do with his old camera equipment.
Decado bought the farm - but hasn't shared anything else about it for the last 8 weeks. Eh-hem. He'll be there in 4 days.
Drawing the Motmot aptly celebrates Thoreau's birthday with a pond painting.
The Duxbury Ramblers share a tutorial on making a walking stick with horn, sweet chestnut, and spalted elm.
Dynamite Skills inspires us to flintknapping.
Fenlander in Swedish Lapland makes a beautiful birch bark sheath.
Gordon shows off a 23-pound monster pike that he caught in North East Scotland.
Tim describes the Jack Mountain 2008 fall bushcraft sememster in Northern Maine on the banks of the Aroostook River.
Pablo sniffs the air and inspires me to spend the evening down in the valley to look for deer.
Sam celebrates his 300th post in the woods of Poland (congratulations!).
Andrew up in Minnesota by Lake Superior's North Shores rounds up on insect repellents.
Tom Mangan shares some interesting pictures on his recent hike at Pescadero Creek County Park near San Franscisco.
The Suburban Bushwacker decides that it is wise to eat a hen pheasant that he found dead on the road, the apparent victim of a hit and run. I'd have partaken.
Rurality displays her chickens' eggs and reminds me that it is Sunday morning and that I have not yet had my breakfast.
Todd at PrimitivePoint smiths a smart looking custom-made tool to harvest pinyon resin.
I browsed through Michael's (Daiku's) blog and wonderful writings.
A vanquished barn cat and mockingbirds fight it out at Three Collie's Northview Diary.
Nina displays some beautiful pictures of Yarrow - I need to keep my eye out for Yarrow around here.
Mark is back from Cedar Lake in Algonquin Park, and put up with the bugs as best as he could.
Torjus has made the break and is now living in the bush and shares his diet of wild meat and fish and some other fascinating activities with us.
Alan Sloman hiker extraordinaire talks to Trevor the Leaning Tree in England.

And that's the round up!

Cheers,

Mungo

A Mini-Mungo On The Way

The last few weeks have been rather difficult on Spring - she's been sick a lot and feeling quite awful.

Forget-Me-Nots - Myosotis Sylvatica

She has some medication that alleviates the discomfort. It has, however, come to our attention due to the input from several doctors, that she appears to be afflicted with nausea caused by a medical condition called pregnancy.

That's RIGHT! We're having a BABY!!! We are over the moon with this, excited, scared, curious, anxious, tickled, and more. All I know is that I am gonna teach this little person all about canoeing and camping and bushcraft and flora and the forests.

I now have the image from the ultrasound - here it is:

Image artifacts were superimposed over the foetus to determine the length, but ignoring these, you can see tiny little foetus' head at the top left, sort of facing towards the 'camera' (2 ghostly dark eyes), and what might be the arm or the torso extending down. It appears to be resting its head on a little soft wool blanket. In another 6 weeks, the various bits and pieces will begin to appear and we will then know if it is a 'he' or a 'she'.

Meanwhile, here is a 3-D representation of a 12-week old foetus doing what foetus's do (which apparently is mostly swirling around a lot).

Mini-Mungo.

Cheers,

Mungo

Sunday Evening Walk in the Park

Sunday evening has arrived - after a week of holiday, it's back to work.

These daisies don't go to work. They just blow in the wind.

These conifer cones are bright green.

A solidified sap or resin leaks from them.

Both Monty and a red insect explore the park with me.

The crab apples are getting big - and sweet. I tried a couple.

This Day Lilly stood out from amongst the brush growing alongside the park.

These cones were so bright and full of eyes.

I wonder if I could make a jam out of these crab apples. Or even a pie.

Well - that's all for tonight - hope you've had a great weekend!

Cheers,

Mungo

Movin' to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lot of Peaches, and Carrots, and Grass, and Potatoes

I've deliberately left a few 'weeds' growing in the corner of the lawn - just to see what emerges. I thought I had identified it as Wild Carrot, or Bird's-nest, also known as Queen Anne's-Lace - and sure enough this is what it turned out to be. Domesticated carrots were bred from Wild Carrot - the coarse fibrous taproot of the latter was selectively bred out until farmers got what we know today as a nice orange carrot.

You've got to be very careful playing with such edibles. Both members of the Parsley family, Wild Carrot resembles Poison Hemlock (think of Socrates) in many ways. Poison Hemlock is... poisonous. It doesn't have a hairy stalk (as this Wild Carrot does).

Wild Carrot flowers in the summer, as opposed to the spring time - you get a little purple or dark florette in the middle of the flower (be patient - it will come). The deep taproot smells like a carrot. Poison Hemlock has a nasty odour, and purple splotches on the stalk. Basically, if you don't know what it is, don't eat it or you may become extremely sick or even mildly dead - or somewhere in between.

On the other hand, if you cast your eyes skyward in our garden, you'll see small unripe peaches dangling from the peach tree.

The neighbourhood here used to be an orchard, and this peach tree is probably descended from a long line of much bigger peach trees.

These peaches are small and hard and taste rather bland and un-peachy. Trust me on this one - I like to snack on items I find in the garden.

But they look very nice to me.

The potato patch is green and abundant. I'm looking forward to digging up the crop in a few months. I will dig them up in the fall, before the frosts come - when the leaves begin to turn yellow and black.

The grass crop appears to be thriving.

It is fully ripe and ready for picking.

That is, if you are a beagle.

Monty went to the vet today and got blood taken and he was relieved to be back in his garden, chewing on his grass.

Cheers,

Mungo

Planning For My Next Canoe Trip to Algonquin Park Begins...

I spent some time earlier this afternoon sorting out my camping gear on the back lawn. The tent I have now is a 2-person tent - fairly large, and it probably weighs (with poles) about 8 pounds. If I am to portage the route in a single go, I will need to tie the tent to the bottom of my backpack. I'd really like to reduce this weight by spending a mere $365 on a Hilleberg Akto. This is a 3lb tent.

I am beginning to make plans for my next canoe trip into Algonquin Park. I have chosen a small lake called Pinetree Lake as my next destination. The last time that I was in the park, a power boat whizzed by in the distance. Solitude (being far from the madding crowd) is one of the reasons I go camping - so I had to find a place that fulfilled only a handful of requirements:

It must have very little human traffic.
It must be a reasonable distance from Toronto.
It must be easy enough to reach by a beagle who has had knee surgery on both hind legs.

To fulfill these requirements I read about all sorts of loops and locations in the park. I located information about a lake called Pinetree Lake.

There are several aspects about this destination that fulfill requirement #1 - little human traffic: It is difficult to locate the access point - the small parking lot is hard to find from the highway, the sign that indicates the start of the portage is about a 50 meter hike in from where you leave the car. You have to portage just to get to the lake - this discourages a significant amount of people. The paddle is fairly long - but not all that tricky.

Requirement #2 - must be a reasonable distance from Toronto. It isn't far at all - maybe 3 or 4 hours. It is only a few kilometers along Highway 60 past the normal turn off for Rock Lake, Lake Louisa etc... And instead of having to drive down 8 kilometers of gravel and dirt road, it is a quick turn off from the asphalt highway to get to the parking lot.

Finally - regarding requirement #3 that the trip not be hard on Monty's little knees - from the accounts that I have read, the portage is fairly easy and straight-forward. There is only the single portage and then a canoe trip. He doesn't use his hind legs to use his paddle, after all.

Here is a map of my planned journey (click on the icons for information about the route):

View Larger Map

Happy Canada Day,

Mungo

Flora from a Walk in the Park

Here are a few pictures that I took of flora during our walk in the park earlier today:

The back field has a million little mushrooms poking their heads up from under the grass.

This is the seed head from Common Plantain.

The flowers of the Narrow-Leaved Plantain.

An awfully small blue flower. Look at the clover leaf for a size reference.

Flowering head of a Narrow-Leaved Plantain, and departing Hover-Fly.

Flowering head of a Narrow-Leaved Plantain. As above.

A 'Little Brown Mushroom', as they call them.

White Clover.

An awfully small yellow flower head. I don't think this is Pineapple Weed. But it might be.

Tiny purple flowerettes. This is small.

Pink Clover.

I don't know what this is, but it flowers from a creeping vine-like body.

Here it is again - closer up.

The leaves from a seedling Purple Sandtree Cherry tree.

I'm not sure what this is.

I pulled a burdock leaf out of the ground to show the purple Rhubard-like stalk. This is the first year growth of the biannual organism. In the second year, a central stalk grows high and develops the burs that stick to your clothes - hence the name BurDock