Down At The Duck Pond.

There are always lots of lovely ducks and geese at our local duck pond which I've featured in a previous post. It's a stone's throw from here as the crow flies and has some gorgeous trees around it. I noticed these last year but didn't take a photo....I thought that they might be apples of some sort but I have never encountered anything quite so teeny. Having had a chat with a chap manning a stall at the apple day I went to a couple of weeks ago he informed me that they were crab apples and this certainly tallies with other images I've seen online. Prior to this I've only ever seen bigger, yellow ones in the wild so this was a new discovery for me.

There was another treat in store for us last week. Masses of these- my Dad asked me if they were growing under silver birches and when I walked past again today en route to my housesparkling joblet I noticed that he was quite right. It is of course Fly Agaric. It derives its name from the tradition of soaking its cap in milk to make an insecticide. Hallucinogenic, some of the Siberian shamans boiled it up and then imbibed it to induce trances. I certainly have a slightly more twee view of them that involves garden gnomes and fairies!

Such beauty and all on my doorstep.

Arilx