The healthy forager

I must begin this post with recounting the most astonishing coincidence that happened yesterday. It was John’s birthday, and we had arranged for him to have a flight in a glider at Aboyne airfield. As it was a 63-mile round trip bike ride and time was short, I had promised not to do any foraging – so you can imagine me cycling along with imaginary blinders at the side of my face, trying very hard not to look at the grass verges!

We got to the airfield, parked our bike and trike next to the club house, and after a lot of chat and a little bit of form-filling, John went up in the air.

He had a wonderful time! I was a little envious of his elation, but at the same time rather glad I got to stay on the ground. Walking back to the bike, packing away my stuff in the pannier, my eye suddenly caught something in the grass…. A beautiful ring of St. George’s!!!! Right next to my bike! I couldn’t believe it.

Now it was my time to be ‘high as a kite’, and needless to say our journey home was filled with outbursts of joy for lots of reasons.

Equally unexpected was today’s find of a Scarletina Bolete. The normal growing season for these is late summer to autumn. Amongst red stiped mushrooms are some of the most poisonous species, so great care must be taken to ID them correctly (well, of course this is always important!). Despite its lurid colours, this Scarletina is edible and some of my forager friends say they actually prefer them to porcini. Either way, it’s an awesome sight!

And last but not least, I’m into raspberry leaf tea now. This goes some way towards keeping our ever expanding shoots in the front garden under control. It really makes the most fabulous drink, so I’d like to raise a non-alcoholic glass to Spring!