Category Archives: All posts

I took a bunch of photos of my dad’s rhododendrons up at the cottage he has in Glenisla. It’s at 900 feet and can get frosts from November through May, so they have to be quite hardy. He has around 300 planted now, mostly in woodland, and over 200 different species and hybrids. I’ve lost the list of the names, but once I get them I will update.

For the moment, you can see them (unnamed) here

A long break from blogging mostly through laziness. A friend of mine Clive and I maek an annual pilgrimage to some of the woodland areas outside London to find mushrooms.I know what you’re thinking, but (honestly) we go looking for all kinds of edible shrooms, not just the liberty caps (a.k.a Magic Mushrooms, Psilocybe semilanceata), which in any case you can buy the spores of here.

Here’s some pictures from our latest outing in late September down in Puttenham Common. Although we didn’t have mush success (too early, not enough moisture on the ground) we work on the principle that “tis better to travel hopefully than to arrive”. In other words, searching for shrooms is an excellent excuse for a walk in the countryside.

Some tree fungus.

Clive trying to demonstrate knowledge of tree fungus.

An adder we came across on a path…

Clive trying to identify some mushrooms

Close up of the mushrooms. We had a job identifying these ones – email me if you know what they are.

I’ve mentioned before that friends of mine Charles and Ruth Simpson have given up London for a life of growing wine in the Langedoc region. They now have a website which tells you all about what they’re up to.