Trying to catch up

My posting is a wee bit erratic at the moment, I am working my little behind off getting ready for a two day Christmas Fair this week. So I am a few days behind myself bloggingwise, lol.

It was a grotty, dark grey, very wet and windy weekend. But that didn't deter us from donning bad weather gear, wrapping up granddaughter Paige, getting our two very excitable Ridgebacks into the back of the car and heading off to the woods on Saturday. Nuts or what, lol? Despite the horrid weather, we had a fabulous time. We had caught a bit of a lull in the weather and got away with drizzle for most of the walk -

I really wanted to take some pictures of fungi, which I had admired a few days earlier. On a very lovely sunny day that was, of course I didn't have my camera with me then, sod's law. Anyway, here we are setting off -

Because of the constant drizzle, there wasn't much colour around, but I do love the different greens of mosses and lichen -

Oh, and of course, chestnuts glow in any kind of weather, don't they? -

The dogs go completely doolally in the woods. There is soooo much space for them to run around in, as those woods are very well kept -

The only problem is, with all those browny reddy leaves and ferns around, the dogs blend in every so well, and sometimes its really hard to spot them, lol -

You only realise they are still around when you see them streaking through the ferns and leaves at what seems like 250mph -

Unless, of course, Poppy decides to take a mud bath -

I find fungi endlessly fascinating and I did manage to take a few photos, although I had to take most of them with flash. When we were little, our parents would take us to the woods every autumn to collect wild fungi and we would have a huge mushroom feast in the evening. My mouth is watering just thinking about that, mushies gently frying in butter, just with chopped onions, salt and pepper and eaten with freshly baked buttered bread. I wish I still knew how to tell the edible ones from the poisonous ones, but I really wouldn't trust myself these days.

I have no idea what sort of fungi I have photographed (except the fly agaric, the pretty and very poisonous red one ), so no text to go with them. Just enjoy the pics, well, if you enjoy looking at fungi at all, that is, lol.

Some of them are very hard to spot amongst the leaves, they know how to hide themselves well, like these in the next couple of photos -

Despite being somewhat damp around the edges, we came home grinning happily, with two very mucky and thankfully very tired doggies. Bliss.

xx