November has been very mild so far. Whether it’s been rainy, windy, calm or sunny the accompanying air has been warm and soft.
Just one night of dipping temperatures at the end of October brought a slight frost which burnt the dahlias without blackening the stems or turning them to mush. So a few straggling flowers remain – but they look understandably tired now.
The freshness in the garden is provided by the blooms on Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’. Just outside the door the fragrance is subtle but delicious and the pale pink clusters are more numerous than last year. It’s an untidy looking shrub with not much interest outside it’s flowering season which is now.
I will try to prune it to give it a ‘better’ more compact shape but I’m not hopeful.
But now on to the ‘M’s of my title:
Maudez. So familiar but always good. Here, the ruined chapel and the path through the pines. Beautiful light. Fairly squelchy underfoot in places. Lots of gone over ‘Slippery Jack’ (Sullius bovinus) mushrooms, and a lovely harvest of Hedgehog fungus (Hydnum repandum.)
Mushrooms…. Not just the Hedgehog Fungus. I’ve had several pickings from a roadside patch of Snowy Waxcaps (Hygrocybe nivea).
Medlars.
This is a beautiful little tree. Five years old now? Not sure.
Its French colloquial name is ‘cul de chien’ or dog’s arse (the first photo will explain that!)
Best harvest ever. I’ve put them in a tray to ‘blet’ Basically that means you just leave them to get so ripe that they’re squidgy and almost rotting. That would put almost anyone off eating them. But they taste like baked apple without having to put them in the oven!
