Monday, November 19, 2007

The Ugliest Corner -- Ugly No Longer!

I've been a bit preoccupied and didn't get updates on the garden posted, though there's been great progress. The construction phase on the new garden is done! The beds are constructed, the paths are laid with concrete squares and bark dust, and it's ready now for some soil building in the beds and finally planting.

Wait for spring? Are you kidding? I've got a nifty cold frame on my Christmas list and some lettuce and kale seeds under the grow lights in the garage.

Yes, I have been a busy little beaver. Not only have I been a little overwhelmed this term with two new classes to teach, but I've also been doing NaNoWriMo -- you know, National Novel Writing Month. I've "won" the last three years, meaning I finished 50,000 words in a single month, and as I'm over 33,000 now, I think it'll be another win. The last three years I wrote fantasy. This year I went for a whole different genre: a historical novel. It's a Pride and Prejudice sequel.

What?

C'mon, everyone else is writing one.

The flowers are mostly faded in the yard, but there's still color. Besides the leaves turning, there has been the most amazing crop of mushrooms this year. Check out these purply-red Russulas that popped up in the back lawn:


These honey mushrooms turned up under the Rhododendron:

And these, um, LBMs* had the loveliest shading from pale gold to mahogany.


*Little Brown Mushrooms. Very scientific terminology.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! A major redo of a section of the garden and NaNoWriMo all in the same month. That's impressive! I did NaNoWriMo in its second and third years and determined I was better suited to writing non-fiction.

Weeping Sore said...

Hi, I just discovered your blog. I'm looking for somebody who has read a collection of poetry entitled "Another Language of Flowers" by Dorothea Tanner. Details at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/17039

Comments?

mengerin said...

Those "Honeys" aren't honeys. They look like "candy caps" one of a few lactarius sp. (As certain as I can be from a photo):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_cap

Easy test: take a lighter and "cook" a piece of it. If it starts to smell of maple syrup, you've got yourself a gem of a mushroom there that is highly prized and *delicious* in desserts.