Hello again everyone!  And welcome to part 2 of our little forest walk.  I hope you are enjoying your coffee/tea right here by the river.  The sun is shining nicely so it feels quite warm.  And Sheree brought some delicious chocolate chip shortbread cookies along today.  I could easily eat a dozen of these myself!  But I won’t.  I’ll be nice and make sure that everybody gets to try them.  That’s such a beautiful picture right before us, don’t you agree?

Oh, look off into the trees over there.  A deer is enjoying her lunch as well and doesn’t seem to be much concerned about us here today.  It is such a joy to get so close to wildlife like this.  Mostly deer won’t be a problem unless they feel threatened in some way.

See over here on this fallen tree?  Another variety of bright orange mushrooms.  I have only seen them on rotting logs.  But they look so nice, even on a cloudy day they look bright and cheerful.

And over there not far from where we are sitting, see that little clump?  That is some crown coral fungus.  Apparently it is edible but tastes best when fresh.  Perhaps so, but it doesn’t really look too appetizing somehow.  So I think I will pass on that one.

As we continue our walk there is something else we missed on the way down.  That’s a club fungus in a nice bright yellow.  We have a lot of club fungus in an off white or beige color, thousands in one spot I found.  But these bright yellow ones I have only seen right here, and there is only ten.  A very nice find indeed.  These are not good to eat.

The path along here is so nice with the sun shining and the tall pines.  The largest pine in this picture is a red pine and is 22 inches (55cm) in diameter.  A nice tree for sure.  The white pines get much bigger though.  But around here it’s hard to find any trees that are more than 12 inches (30cm) in diameter due to all the logging that took place here more than a hundred years ago.  In this cold climate it takes time to grow a large tree.

Now that we are in the clearing, look at all the butterflies.  These are painted lady butterflies that have flocked together and are on their way to a warmer place as well.  Smart.  Why stay when you can fly away?

Well, here we are, back once again.  Thank you so much for joining me today on this beautiful forest path.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.  It’s always so nice to have someone along to share in these little joys.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

© Steve McLeod.