Monty the Beagle and the Peach

Monty and I sat in the backyard as the light fell and the evening came. The weather has become a little cool, which I prefer. Wrapped in a wool blanket, laying on the ground, I was perfectly content. Monty spent time between sitting beside me and exploring the garden.


The moon shone brightly in the sky over the peach tree.


The peaches have begun to turn yellow and orange - no longer are they merely hard lumps of green.


I picked one without too many blemishes and the hard, transparent gum that seems to appear on many of the peaches.


I took a few bites - the flesh was firm, like an apple, but tasty like a peach. I'm guessing it still has a week to go before it is ready for eating, but it was really nice!


Monty wanted to see what I was eating. He wanted to give it a try. So I took a few final bites, and tossed it to the ground.


He danced about it, and took a few bluff runs at the half-devoured peach. Then he played with it with his foot a little, kicking it about. Finally he lay down, gave it a few half-hearted chews, pushed it away with his snout and then went about his back garden peregrinations - searching for insects and squirrels and snuffly things.

Cheers,

Mungo

Monty the Beagle in the Poppies

When I walked out into the backyard on Friday evening, I found Monty sitting in the flower bed, sniffing away at the plants. The garden is raised at this area, so that he can see clear into the back field, and of course right over the backyard, and into both neighbours' gardens.


The poppy seeds were in a batch of 'wild-flower' seeds that I scattered around the edges of the gardends back in May. They finally came up.


Cheers,

Mungo

I'm Mad About Wool Blankets

I picked up some wool blankets recently at a second hand thrift shop. They cost $4 each. I am utterly amazed at the prices there. To buy a new King sized blanket at the Hudson's Bay store in Canada, it would cost me $475. For a Double sized blanket, $275. Even to buy one on Ebay.ca, with shipping factored in, I'd be paying at least $75.

So instead, I occasionally stop in at the neighbourhood thrift shop and browse the rack at the back of the floor where you can pick up used comforters, sheets and towels. Nearly every time I go there, there are one or two blankets waiting for me.

Why is this such a big deal for me? I'm not sure. I'm obsessed for some reason. For the outdoors, there is something magical about a wool blanket. It is a terrific insulator. Your body emits about the same amount of heat energy as a 150 watt light bulb. The trick to staying warm in the outdoors is to keep that heat from leaking away from your body faster than your body can replenish it. You can achieve that equilibrium - or overcome the environmental temperature differential - by keeping colder objects away from your body (the ground, water, even cold air) or by adding warmth to your immediate area (warm air from a fire, hot water bottle, infrared radiation from a fire-heated rock wall, etc...), which effectively does the same thing - keeping the cold away.

Mors Kochanski talks about treating your clothing and covering as a micro-environment. He says that you should be sufficiently clothed to survive whatever nature can throw at your for 4 full days, without having a shelter. So you need to have layers of covering and clothes that will trap air in it, and not hold water. Water is not a great insulator. In fact, it allows heat to migrate from your body to the environment 27 times more efficiently than does air. Worse still would be to wrap yourself in aluminum foil... I would be prepared for the worst if I had a couple of wool blankets with my normal winter camping clothing. Even wet, wool retains a degree of insulation - and it won't wick and absorb moisture like cotton does.

A wool blanket is safe around a fire - when sparks land on a wool blanket, it chars but won't catch on fire. It won't melt like polyester fleece, or like plastic. You can use a wool blanket to sit on, or as a quick tarp-like shelter which will protect you from light rains, and from the sun.

A wool blanket can be quickly and easily made into a coat, or with extra effort, into a nicely-cut shirt, and can be used as a sleeping bag:



Dave Canterbury of the Pathfinder Training School on his Wilderness Outfitters Archery web site has a great video entitled One Blanket Tricks demonstrating a match-coat:



A backpack can be quickly made with a wool blanket and some twine, to carry your gear, or even a baby. Tightly rolled up and tied off with a bit of twine or paracord, I can easily attach a couple of blankets to a knapsack.

You can collect nuts, seeds, berries, fruit and other edibles on an outspread blanket, and of course use it to transport them in.

But for me, a wool blanket is mostly for wrapping myself in when I am sitting down in the outdoors.

Cheers,

Mungo

White-tailed Deer - Odocoileus virginianus

I saw no deer in the valley today (White-tailed Deer - Odocoileus virginianus).

With my canvas knapsack packed with a green wool blanket, a Nalgene bottle full of water, a can of beef stew, my butane/propane stove, a spoon and my mora knife, I made my way down into the valley.

Along the way I walked under a maple tree, branches dangling low. I reached and grabbed a low branch and swept it out of my way and walked under and away... I noticed vaguely and then rather clearly an intense buzzing and looked back to see a hornet's nest surrounded with swirling hornets. I backed away slowly, and then saw a hornet fly straight toward me - like a bullet. Man, you shoulda seen me run - I dove for the ground, did a roll (seriously), and leaped off the edge of a slope racing away as fast as I could. My heart was beating as fast as a bongo-drum, and I was laughing to myself - now THAT was intense! The hornet missed.

The rest of my journey was far more relaxed. I walked down into the pine woods and listened carefully to the birds and to the scolding squirrels. I even listened for hornets - being somewhat attuned to them at this point. I heard nothing out of the ordinary.

I sat down on my blanket, began to heat up my can of beef stew and just lay there beneath the branches.

After a while I packed up and began to walk in a direction that I'd never been before - straight back through the most wooded parts of the area and beneath some very spiky bushes. After a hundred feet or so, the area opened up and the sun shone down. At my feet there were footprints from deer all about. I noticed the grasses and weeds were gently trampled down in areas, and it appeared that deer had slept the night in one section. On and on through the undergrowth I pushed my way through and saw more and more sign of deer. Deer scat - a loose pile of dark pellets - looked fresh, and I had a sudden feeling that there were deer deeper in the woods watching me carefully. Deer leave their fawns alone for hours. Fawn sleep quietly in the grass, and so I scoured the area visually to see if I could seen any. I didn't.

I eventually emerged from a ridge on the edge of a well-worn trail. Taking this back into the main trail of the valley, I wandered slowly and looked around at the green and the birds flitting about.

Although I didn't see any deer today, I almost did. I'll wander down there during the evening soon, when the deer will be more active - I marked various locations on my GPS device so that I would be able to find my way back again. It will be a good opportunity for me to bring my night-vision device too...

The graceful white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus is well known to most North Americans. Hunters and nonhunters alike recognize the animal by its habit of flourishing its tail over its back, revealing a stark white underside and white buttocks. This "flag" of the white-tailed deer is often glimpsed as the high spirited animal dashes away from people. The tail has a broad base and is almost a foot long. When lowered, it is brown with a white fringe.

In summer, the white-tailed deer has a reddish pelage, or fur, on its back and sides and is whitish beneath. In winter the upper parts turn greyish. Full grown male deer frequently exceed 1 m at shoulder height and 110 kg in weight, with exceptional individuals weighing up to 200 kg in the northern part of their range.

The antlers of the mature male white-tail consist of a forward curving main beam from which single points project upward and often slightly inward. Perhaps one of every 1 000 females also bears small, simple antlers.

The white-tailed deer is hard to distinguish from the black-tailed deer. The black-tail has similar antlers and will sometimes show the characteristic "flag" of the white-tail but usually with less flare. Fortunately, for identification purposes, the black-tailed deer occurs only west of the Great Divide (its Canadian range is coastal B.C. and Vancouver Island), where the white-tailed deer is uncommon.

Confusion is less likely between the white-tailed deer and the darker stockier mule deer. The mule deer can be distinguished by a small white tail with a black tip and antlers that divide and redivide into paired beams and points. It also has large ears that are more like those of a mule than those of its more delicate cousin. Unfortunately people in different parts of Canada have given these two types of deer the same nickname, "jumper." In the Prairies the mule deer is dubbed "jumper," in recognition of its stiff-legged bouncing gait. Elsewhere people may mean the white-tail when they use the term, referring to that animal’s irregular jumping gallop when alarmed.

Cheers,

Mungo

Valley Vistas and Views

This weekend I intend to do a bit more trekking - but first let's cover off the last photographs from last weekend...


Creamy white quartzite pebble exposed from the clay cliff by the rains.


Ragged undergrowth and toppled trees by steep ravine walls.


Queen Anne's Lace or Wild Carrot blooming.


An electrical cable buried in the growing roots - because of the placement and region of the valley, this must be at least 50 years old. I'm guessing...


Staghorn sumac.


Nibble on the flowerettes and get that tangy flavour.


I unearthed a wild carrot root, and scraped the root casing off with my knife. It tasted one hand somewhat bland, but there was a nice sharp carrot smell, and a carroty aftertaste. This wouldn't be much sustenance, but it would certainly lend a wonderful flavour to a salad or to a stew... maybe if you could boil up a couple cups worth of roots, you'd get a good rush of starch.


The Sumac cold tea would give a good boost on a hot day or even a cold day... brew it cold and then heat it up afterward.


Wild Carrot flowers look so nice.


Wild Carrot roots looks so innocuous.


The root you see above is that of Chicory. Grab a handful of these, roast them up and make a coffee drink out of the ground-up roots.


Canada Goldenrod looks pretty.


I found this scat on a very inaccessible slope. I think it is either that of a skunk or even of a fox. Anyone? I was able to identify wolf poop when I went to New Hampshire last year. This looks skunkish or foxish...

Cheers,

Mungo

Views from the Valley - Alder, Mountain Ash, Sumac, Chicory and more...

I am really having a great time learning more and more about the flora of the valley here behind my home in Toronto, Ontario. It's almost like I am beginning to reach a sort of critical mass where the various reading I have done over the past year are coming together and I am making more and more sense of it all. It's a great feeling - getting to know my natural environment.


This is an amazing tree - the Speckled Alder (Alnus incana subsp. rugosa) - it is related to the birch tree. The catkins are edible and are supposed to taste awful (probably because of the salicylic acid). The image above is of the female catkins that have dried out.


The image above is of female alder catkins that are still unripened - I suspect that these are the edible form - survival food containing proteins and starches. I found it especially interesting to learn that the tree roots contain nitrogenous nodules (similar to how clover plants do, etc...), and these are about the size of a potato. I hope you found it especially interesting too... :-)


Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) is in abundance - in fact they line the highways and roads near my home. It is also known as Coffeeweed, because the roots can be roasted, ground up and used either as a coffee substitute or additive to extend your coffee supplies.


The blue flowers are radiant.


Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is a bright yellow flowering weed - not to be confused with the infamous Ragweed. In Germany, it is touted as a herbal treatment for urinary tract disorders (inflammation, infection, etc...) and as a way to treat, and even prevent kidney stones. The preparation is a tea made from the leaves (in the picture above, you can see the smooth, elongated green leaves - that look a little like willow leaves).

I have had kidney stones and they hurt. If I feel one coming on, I'll drink a little Goldenrod tea... in addition to visiting my family doctor.


Good old Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina). Next time you see one, grab a few of the tiny flowers on a bud like above, and put them on your tongue... there is an intense, acidic, ascorbic acid kind of flavouring to it - as though you have put lemonade powder in your mouth. And indeed - it contains ascorbic acid. A cold-steeped drink, filtered through cloth to remove the irritating fuzz tastes really nice. I've made a pleasant drink from this flower in a Nalgene bottle before. Quite nice - and great if you are suffering from Scurvy... By the way, if you use hot or boiling water, bitter tannins will leach out and make for an unpleasant drink.


The Grape vine tendrils reach out and capture everything that they can reach.


American Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) grows rampant in these parts. We have one at the bottom of our backyard, they line the parking lot at my work and are scattered amongst the valley. The bright berries sit on the trees for a long time, because the quality of the berries is poor (low in protein and lipids) - and birds preferentially eat other berries first... I ate a berry the other day on my way into the car after work - and it left an awful, bitter quinine-like (combined with subtle overtones of camphor and naphtha gas) flavour in my mouth for nearly 15 minutes. But they aren't toxic - just nasty.


One of my favourites is the European Rowan or Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia). The dense clusters of fruit above are also considered poor-quality fruit for birds and animals - and I understand why (other than it having low protein and lipid yields)... it doesn't taste very nice, but nothing as nasty as the Winterberry. Apparently shortly after the first frosts, the berries develop a sweet flavour. We'll see.


When I was a kid, we had one of these growing on the front lawn. It had grey, smooth bark and I loved to climb it. I would grab handfuls of the berries and throw them about.


At the time, my Dad worked at Rowntrees (chocolates) and I thought that the tree was a Rowntree-tree. It made sense at the time, but I often wondered how it came to be that we had a tree named after my Dad's work in the front yard.


I'm not sure what this pink clustered flower is - anyone?


Well - that's it for tonight - more soon!

Cheers,

Mungo

Ventures in the Valley

Early on Saturday morning I wandered down into the valley. I made my way down to the river which was swollen with all of the rain that we have had over the past few days. The sound of the rushing waters made it through the woods up to nearly the entrance to the valley, which is unusual.


Along the way I saw a lot of grape vines extending their tendrils and growing into the plants around them. While making some cordage with grape vines earlier this year, I discovered that the growing tips of the vines have a sweet, tart, grape flavour to them. So I snipped off the tips that you see in the photo below and nibbled on them. It would take a lot to fill my belly though.


The flowers above below to the Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), or Bouncing Bet - which is a delicate, easily broken plant. The stalk is full of liquid and it gets its name from the fact that the leaves contain saponins. Wikipedia has an entry that describes these compounds:

Saponins dissolve in water to form a stable soapy froth; this is thought to be due to their amphiphilic nature. The word sapon means 'soap', referring to the permanent froth saponins make on being mixed with water. Soapwort, Saponaria officinalis also called "Bouncing Bet" in the carnation family is the quintessential saponin-producing plant. The plant contains mildly poisonous saponins, as reflected in the genus name from the Latin sapo, meaning soap.

So all you need to do if you need a quick wash etc... is grab a handful of the leaves, squish them up with some water and you will have some soapy water with which to scrub. Nature sure seems to provide...


The valley is full of snails. Boil up a few of these for a rather chewy and dull meal if you'd like. I'll stick with sandwiches.


The grape vine leaves seem to fill in every spot to take advantage of the light filtering down through the trees.


The very young leaves can be nibbled, and cooked up as greens.


I sat for a while on the river bank.


I listened to the water rush by and wondered where it was all coming from, and what it had passed and witnessed along the way.


And then a peculiar mass of shapes in the distance snapped me out of my reverie - it appeared to be a mass of eggs. On closer examination, it was a mass of Golf Ball eggs.


A hole in the ravine bluff above me looks like it was dug by an animal. Perhaps dug by whatever laid those Golf Ball eggs.


I sat for a little longer but the heat and the humidity began to get to me.


A week or so ago I had made a small fire down in the valley, but it was too hot for that.



So I struck out again onto the path leading out of the valley again and made my way home.

Cheers,

Mungo

The Common Inkcap (Coprinopsis atramentaria) or Inky Cap Mushroom

This afternoon Spring and her mum and I went to Eaton's Center in downtown Toronto. They wandered off looking at clothes and shoes and eyeglasses and I plopped myself down in a comfortable chair with a handful of books. I picked up a Peterson's Guide to Eastern North American Forests, a couple of books on Black Bears and most importantly - Roger Philip's Mushroom manual: "Mushrooms: A Comprehensive Guide with Over 1,2500 Detailed Photograph".

After a few minutes I settled on the Mushroom manual and pored through it cover to cover. I'd have bought it, but it was $36.00 and that was a little much... maybe for Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. Or the coming Civic Holiday in August (in case Spring is reading this)...



Once we got home I snuffled about in the back garden and located a couple of mushrooms that were growing in the grass, just above a buried, rotting 4x4 chunk of wood that has likely been their since the house was built in 1956.



Knowing that Roger Philip's Mushroom manual has a companion web site, I brought the mushrooms inside (carefully not disturbing them to make identification easier), cut the smaller one in half, lengthwise along the stem and through the cap, and lay half of that on a white sheet of paper to collect any spores that would have dropped and examined it all carefully under a light.


Image Source

The mushroom smelled very little, if anything kind of like a typical market-bought button mushroom, but maybe a little more sour. The cap was conical or bell-shaped, and brown to beige in colouration. The stem was white, hollow and fractured easily when pressed between my fingers. I didn't see a ring around the stem, but there did appear to be a small flap that might have been the remnants of a ring (volva or veil) there.

Using a mushroom-identification quiz found on the Roger's Mushroom site, I narrowed it down to 23 posssibilities. Carefully considering each one, I finally isolated the 'Common Inkcap', also known as Tippler's Bane (for reasons I shall explain shortly).

Below are a few interesting things I discovered from reading various sources:

• It is edible.
• It is poisonous if consumed with alcohol, or if alcohol consumed within a few days of eating the mushroom. This is the reason it is known as Tippler's (someone who drinks) Bane... It won't kill you, but basically gives you the symptoms of a horrific hangover.
• When the caps produce enzymes that cause the material to auto-digest (mushrooms do this to release any remaining spores caught in the gills or pore beneath their caps), it is called 'deliquescence'. This deliquesced cap material is black, and when boiled up with a little water and cloves, makes a great, long-lasting black drawing ink.

After cooking up a cupful of these Common Inkcaps in butter, with salt and pepper, it would be wise to avoid a glass of wine for a week or so:

"The poisonous effects of C. atramentaria are caused by a molecule named coprine, or N5-1-hydroxycyclopropyl-L-glutamine (shown below), which is metabolized to 1-aminocyclopropanol. This latter compound then inhibits the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which normally oxidizes alcohol (i.e., ethanol) into acetaldehyde.
After alcohol intake under the influence of coprine, the concentration of acetaldehyde in the blood may be 5 to 10 times higher than that found during metabolism of the same amount of alcohol alone. As acetaldehyde is one of the major causes of the symptoms of a "hangover" this produces immediate and severe negative reaction to alcohol intake. Some 5-10 minutes after alcohol intake, the unfortunate victim may experience the effects of a severe hangover for a period of 30 minutes up to several hours. Symptoms include flushing of the skin, accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath, nausea, and vomiting. The ill effects of coprine may be felt if alcohol is consumed for up to several days after eating the mushroom. The biochemical mechanism of action of coprine and the resultant symptoms are similar to the drug disulfiram, used to treat chronic alcoholism."

I also recognized a few mushrooms that I've seen down in the valley and in other places I've wandered, in the Roger Philip's Mushroom book. Can't wait to learn more about mushrooms!

Cheers,

Mungo

Going Down into the Valley

Yesterday morning, bright and early, I decided to throw on a back-pack and head on down into the valley behind the house.


I saw a yellow flutter in the grass and saw a couple of male American Goldfinches (Carduelis tristis) chasing insects near the ground. The one above was sitting on the stalk of a weed, a good 2 inches above the ground.


It was an overcast day and the clouds were threatening rain. The weather service was threatening SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS. I brought an umbrella in my pack just in case, but never ended up needing it.


The sounds of the woods increased as I got deeper down the path - birds and wind and the rushing of water.


So much firewood around - too bad I wasn't doing some remote camping.


There were a few mosquitos, but nothing too bothersome. The air was thick and humid and it made me sweat easily as I hiked up and down the ridges.


A wikkiup has stood for at least the last couple of years along the first valley leading deeper into the woods. It is hidden up the slope, but a couple of sheets and some plastic reveal its presence. I don't think it is occupied, and I haven't gotten closer to see - but it is an ingenious shelter: well hidden, strong and has a great potential for weather proofing and could stand up to the winters here.


Closer to the ground, the rain has managed to wash away most - but not all - fungi and mushrooms.


Green is all about and the air smells fresh.


Through gaps in the overcast clouds, pockets of sunlight appear and brighten up the forest.


Gnarled trees remind me of this area's past - orchards and rough terrain.


The heat and the diffuse light of the morning made me tired and decided to head home - but first I wandered onto the pebble and sand beach that lays alongside the river.



A dark swirling mass in the creek attracted my attention - I got closer and filmed it and realized it was a school of minnows, swarming about in the sunlight. It was then time to hike out again.

Cheers,

Mungo