Intensive foraging this past week has allowed us to feast on the fruits of the forest . Sulfur shelf dominated with the largest single (although unusable) find, estimated at around five pounds, spotted along a stone wall near the bog at Grassy Pond, and the highest find was spotted in a diseased tree along Route 2 just past the Concord Roundabout. ( Read more... )

The leaves are just starting to hint at their fall colors, with tones of orange and yellow showing through on some maple trees. At Cat Rock Park in Weston, the fields are blooming with mauve sweet joe's pye weed, yellow golden rod, and white fleabane. The persistant trill of crickets is a reminder to enjoy these fading days of summer.

To kick off ( Read more... )

Although we had intended on going to the art museum in Boston yesterday, we had a late start and found ourselves inexplicably drawn back to Harold Parker Forest. As we sauntered over towards the office to grab a new copy of the trail map I was spotted by a staff member who, after asking if I needed help, bluntly asked me if I was there to pick ( Read more... )

Harold Parker has become a new favorite hiking spot. This time we went armed with DEET and the mosquitoes mostly left us alone. We found a nice patch of golden chanterelles, a couple of cinnabar chanterelles, hedgehog mushrooms, and a variety of boletes. The yellow foots that were in abundance last weekend were no where to be seen. Strangely, this ( Read more... )

What a weekend! Saturday we went to a new park, Breakheart Reservation in Saugus. The major routes are paved for bikes with smaller dirt paths branching out to cross the property and encircle the lakes. Most people were clustered around the swimming area leaving the rest of the property reasonably secluded. We saw a large dark fishing spider near ( Read more... )

Last Tuesday we went out to the cinema in Lowell to see the long awaited Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The movies always have to truncate the book plots slightly but that said, it was well executed and a good watch. Micheal Gambon as Dumbledoor was very intense, and ironically, now that the character is dead I finally felt that he was a ( Read more... )

The heat of summer came on suddenly. It has been in the high 80's with full sun this weekend - perfect weather for Jamie and Crystal's trip to visit us from Rochester.

On Friday, Julian was left behind for work but the three of us headed up North to Salem. We watched the free video in the visitor center to soak up some AC before heading outside to ( Read more... )

As hoped, the rain tapered off just in time for 4th of July weekend. We invented an unusual dinner of bbq chicken and steak combined with blueberry pancakes topped with sliced strawberries. Although we didn't get out to any firework displays, our neighbors across the creek lit a few that we made out through the trees.

On Saturday we tried to go ( Read more... )

Last weekend we risked another infamous SuAsCo hike. After eliminating several options cheerfully describing areas that would be unpassable during the wet season, we selected "hike number 8", Weston Town Forest. As usual, the map and trail description did not correlate at all with the trails we were on. We think it's possible that the author of ( Read more... )

June is fully underway but the weather has continued to be rainy and unseasonably cool. We drove over to Acton on the weekend between showers for some fresh air. There were patches of the achloroplastic Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora, pushing up from the detritus but no mushrooms worth notice.

We planted some herb seeds from a starter kit that ( Read more... )