Mushroom Hunting

I am spending this week at our family cottage, or rather, a summer house? Having a cottage or a house used mostly in summer is something that has a tradition and is very popular where I live. And I love ours. It is great to get out of the city once in a while and only chill in the outdoors, walk in the surounding forests, etc.

 Not every mushroom is edible, but some are at least really worth taking a picture of. 
Yellow staghorn (Calocera viscosa)

It was raining for at least a week now and it is the right time of the year for mushrooms. Mushroom hunting is another thing, also very close to cottaging, that has a tradition here. Even the news will usually tell how mycologists suppose mushrooms could start growing and in which parts of our country they do. And once this happens, the craze starts. While driving here, I noticed a car, or two, or six at about every entrance to any bigger forest and people with baskets looking for mushrooms. It is a popular family activity. Today my parents arrived and we went, too. There have been years and times when the mushrooms were much more numerous, but if we looked carefully, after a while we usually find a spot with a few. Until we filled our baskets. Good enough for today's lunch and at least a week or two of my favourite mushroom meals, yum!
I even found an elk's antler, for the very first time in my life, if I can remember. I am going to wash it carefully and put it someplace nice in our summer house.

 Sometimes you can't avoid some uninvited guests in the bakset, like this well grown 
European garden spider (Araneus diadematus)