Nope that didn’t work.
A nice day out yesterday as part of a Foraging excursion in woodland between Exeter & Honiton.
We started out along an overgrown grassy track identifying & then collecting various edible plants while also having certain others pointed out as inedible or even poisonous.
Dandelion
Burdock buds
Yarrow
So, to begin with clover, dandelion leaves, yarrow & a couple of others whose names I can’t recall. Burdock was pointed out but with that it’s the roots that get boiled. As the path ran into woodland we started to see various fungi (mostly inedible) including Deceivers, Destroying Angel, King Arthurs cakes, various Bracket fungi & common earthballs. We collected a lot of nettles, Garlic Mustard (Jack by the Hedge) and, new for me, Sorrel which has a delicious tangy lemon flavour. I also picked a small haul of blackberries.
Can’t recall the names of these two. we’ll get a summary of what we found/cooked by email on Wednesday.
Edit: larger leaf was plantain
Destroying Angel
Rosehips (not quite ripe yet)
More inedible shrooms
We reached a place in the woods where log stumps were set around. a small fire was lit and a table set up to prepare various dishes. Some of us were sent out to find more of certain things ie nettles, dandelion leaves, more sorrel & the garlic mustard.
Beech nuts were falling from the trees all around us.
Common Earthball cut open
Sorrel
Brackets
Deceiver 'shrooms in here
Cous Cous & various leaves starter
They did also cook up some pasta with various of the other leaves & some nettle tea
It was an instructive day out & surprising to learn how much of the green stuff is edible & tasty.
Organised by these people.
Tomorrow: I’m in hospital with fungus poisoning
We didn’t eat any of the fungi (or anything we’d put it on or next to)
i did wonder what this one was, white inside & it smelt very truffly.
edible while white inside as per your pic
(liking your adventurous nail polish colour too )
Carefully chosen, inspired by @AmDismal 's toes
Has he dropped something heavy on them ?
Of course
It’s all pointing one way
Yessum, sure looking that way :pagan
In another time the woman leading the walk would have been candidate#1 for the ducking stool.
Awesome !
The problem being, you won’t want to leave. Enjoy.
Lovely start to the day, visit to the dentist and a 53min / 3.8miles drive to get there.
I could have walked it in less time. FFS
(Drive because go to work after)
Oxon not getting any less fucked-up I see…
It’s one thing I don’t miss.
Last two weeks have been abysmal.
I’m >10 years out of date now, but even back then I’d never lived in a region so catastrophically prone to comprehensive gridlock across large areas as Oxon. I guess the reasons are obvious enough (+++houses / - - - infrastructure)
I have ben trying to get to Headington which is as bad as it gets in terms of traffic. If it rains (which it really has) the number of cars explodes so a syatem that only just copes normally falls over on a heap.
If it wasn’t for the unaffordable housing, expensive beer and the innate superiority complex of the residents we’d have moved.
You could add +++commuters (the work isn’t where the people are) and —road repairers (it’s very expensive to live here and the councils don’t want to pay them very much).
I’ve lived here so long now that I’ve just got used to it. But if I try to look at it objectively it can seem literally unbelievable.
Case in point: The railway bridge over Botley Road.
Because of the need to bridge multiple channels of the Thames and then to pass under the railway, only one road comes into Oxford from the west. Understandably it is horrifically busy during the rush hour, and has been since time immemorial.
A plan to expand the railway station, which is accessed from that road, now means the railway bridge over the road has to be replaced. You might have thought they’d have planned this meticulously in advance before closing the road. But no.
They closed the road in April 2023, supposedly to get the first phase out of the way. It was due to reopen from October 2023 until March this year when it would close again for them to complete the job, with the bridge itself being replaced last July. Job done.
In fact it’s never re-opened since the April '23 closure. The closure is now described simply as ‘indefinite’. They literally don’t know, at all, when they will be able to re-open it. The full horror is described here, at least up to last July. As far as I know they’re no further on. My sister lives on this road (strictly on an extension of it) and has to drive round nearly a quarter of the ring road in one direction or the other if she wants to get into the city. Unsurprisingly she rarely does these days.
The works look like this (that soup of machinery, metalwork and people is where the Botley Road used to be). As you can see, it’s not even a big bridge.