Monday, September 7, 2009

Smoke- or Ghost mushrooms. When they look like this they are quite tasty. But as soon as they start to change from pure whitr one better leave them alone.


It´s not cold outside, but it´s not warm either. The sky is very evenly gray and it´s slowly getting darker now. Even if autumn sort of made a halt these last days, the daylight says otherwise. Now I have to light the lamps when I get up in the morning and it´s pitch black outside. Not to far away we will have darkness most of the twety four hours we have to spend every day, awake or asleep. This year I have to get dog collars with inbuilt lights in them. Imagine how it is to walk with three black dogs when it´s black outside :-)





I like this pictyre of these sort of fleshy mushrooms. I wonder if they are edible?


When I was younger I and two friends rented an old croft in the dark forests of Dalsland, a wonderful county in Sweden. My friend Christer (it´s not that an uncommon name) had to go to the outhouse late one evening. When he walked back he could hear my dog run around outside. He thought he might have let her out by misstake, so he started to talk to her to bring her inside again. For some reasom she showed grate reluctans to follow him, wich was very odd. If she listened to any one else than me it was him. So he stopped and continued to talk to her. She got really close, but didn´t want to follow him at all. So he opened the door to tell me that she was outside. When opening the front door the light came out on the yard. To his surprise my dog stood by the door waiving her tail. Behind him however stood the big male badger we had living under a barn beside our yard :-) :-)



There are a lot of superstition around badgers. Some say for instance that they bite until they hear bones brake and that one always should have coal in ones rubber boots so the cracking sound comes early. They also say that they are really aggressive. But to be honest, badgers are really friendly animals. I once had a cat that spend every summer living beside a family of badgers, in their burrow ( the same that the male badger that followed my friend in the beginning of this blog). I have another friend that when young played with the badgers cubs every summer and the older badgers just laid and watched it. A couple of years ago they had foxtraps (big boxes that doesn´t hurt the animal) placed by the big creek. They had it to catch foxes with fox scabies. It is terrible for a fox to get and it dies slowly and painfully when getting it.

A Maple of some kind, I´m not sure wich one though. Even if this one really has autumn colors, the autumn has come to a halt it seemes. But I don´t mind if we get a longer period with some warm weather.
I passed the trap every day during my vacation and every morning there was a little female badger in it :-) She loved to greate my dogs and showed no signs of agression at all. She had learned that there were nice ,and easy getting, food in the trap. So she went there every night and ate what she found. She understood very well that she would be trapped, but didn´t mind since she also understood that she would get released every morning :-) :-) The only trouble one can have with badgers if they make a burrow beside ones house is that they after a while undermines the foundation to the house. Not something one wants :-) :-) Otherwise they are, if not surprised ofcourse, rather nice animals.
Have a great day now!

There it just stood in the middle of a field I pass every day. I didn´t notice it until the bud opened. When seeing this sunflower I suddenly saw a couple of others too. We feed our birds all winter long with mostly sunflower seeds, so this one comes from my neighbours birdfeeding place.


I have a little lantern just above the entrance to my garden. Nowdays it´s rusty and the paint is falling of, but I do like it perhaps evenb more then. I light a little candle there in winter but especially every Christmas eve.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh How I adore your pictures. Back in Maine when you walk through the woods at daybreak you find such images as these. If your really lucky you can come upon a family of deer grazing. I love how the sky peeks through the trees, the smell of damp leaves under foot and the noises from around you with forest animals. It's probably the most relaxing time of day ~ just before the hustle and bustle of life take over. Beautiful.
Tammy

jaz@octoberfarm said...

hi christer....we are finally getting some rain. teddy is back from the hospital. i expected her to run to me when she saw me but she could hardly walk. she won't put her rear leg down at all. she had an IV in it in the hospital so i am hoping she is just sore from that but i am very surprised. she is really a tough one and never shows pain so this must really hurt. as i type she is snoring very loudly and i am thinking that sleeping is the best thing for her right now. i hardly slept last. i kept dreaming about her. then i kept thinking i heard her. i hope both of us will get a good nights sleep tonight! joyce

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Tammy!
I have started to understand that Main looks very much like it does here. So I would probably like the nature there as much as here I think :-) Even if I´m a spring person, nothing beats an early autumn morning when the air is a bit chilly and one can feel all ths autumn smells :-)

I usually makes some noice when walking early mornings by the forest, just so we don´t surprise the different deers we have here. Nowdays we have four kind of deers here. Red deer and fallow deer that has escaped from enclosures, our common small deer and the moose.

I also make noice because we nowdays have a lot of wild hogs too.I really don´t want to surprise a sow with piglets :-)THey can be really nasty if they feel threatened. So usually I don´t see alot of animals :-) :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
I´m glad that Teddy is back now! She probably has a lot of pain if she doesn´t put down her leg, they are usually too good to hide if they are in pain otherwise!

If she didn´t run to You she might want to punish You a bit, leaving her at the vet. That has happened to me sometimes :-) They really, really wants to show how bad we´ve been leaving them at that awful place. Not caring that we mighty have saved their lives :-) :-)

I really hopes that You both will have a good nights sleep now! I also hope that the rain will cool down the air a lot!
Have a great day now!
Christer.

NinaVästerplana said...

Njae.... grävlingar har jag liksom lite respekt för.... vill inte komma för nära..... är väl det där med kol i stövlarna o benknaster som spökar ;-)
Ha´t himla gôrgôtt
Nina

Anonymous said...

Great pictures, wonderful story today Christer, I think your blog has a book in the making. This would be one of my favorite posts, love the Badger story, can picture it in my minds eye. I'm curious about the cat sleeping with them. That I never heard of but then on the internet I see cats sleeping with dogs, bears, birds and sheep. So what do I know. Getting ready for my cookout over here. I'll save you some ribs.

Wsprsweetly Of Cottages said...

I would never have believed that could be so many different varieties of mushrooms! Amazing!

I have always heard that Badgers are a naturally vicious animal..but it was probably started by someone who deserved to be snarled at. When threatened, anyone would snarl! :)

I get so tickled when you comment on my silly things around the house. I had a good time with the candelstick. I was delighted when I found it on Saturday. Transforming things is such fun!

I love that old lantern. There are just some old things that should be left alone..like me. I finally realized I was better just left to age gracefully. I hope no one tries to spray paint me! :)

It must be the dampness of Sweden that makes it so green, all the most and the beauty! Lovely!!

jaz@octoberfarm said...

teddy took a good nap but her leg is not better. i fed her tuna and made her the best piece of steak i could find. i think she is thinking about forgiving me now! if her leg isn't better tomorrow i will take her back to the vet.

Aussiemade said...

Good morning from Australia Christer. It is lovely seeing your beautiful photographs and reading your descriptive words.
Badgers sound a lot like wombats, except wombats are rather more rounded and have much shorter tails. I will pop a photograph of a baby wombat on my blog. They grow quite large, have poor eyesight but very good hearing. They too like to dig burrows and if you have one as my mother did near her home, it was digging a burrow under their cement foundations.
They are amazing creatures.

You have amazing fungi, mind you with all the rain here we have been getting some more unusual ones I will endevour to take some photos next time I come across any.

I had a chuckle as I imagined you walking in the dark and the three dogs not being able to be seen.

DianeLynn said...

I agree with everyone...you out do yourself with each blog...love the badger story. Your world is so interesting and I am so happy that we are blogging friends.
Good evening Christer!

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Tjänare Nina!
Naturligtvis skall man ju aldrig tränga in dem i ett hörne eller verka hotfull, då kan de bli farliga. Ett grävlingbett är inte roligt :-)
Ha det gott!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Z&M!
Thanks!
That cat, Doris was her name, didn´t want to follow me home after the weekend, so she usually went down under the barn where the badger burrow was. The badgers didn´t care about it, so she usually stayed there the wholr summer.

Since she slept in the beginning of that burrow I never had to fear that a fox would take her either. Foxes and badgers isn´t that close :-)She would only come home when frost came in autumn.

Ribs would be grate :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Mona!
Badgers are vicious during hunting season, when they send their dogs down into the burrows. I think I would be that too if someone let in a hunting dog into my home to get me out so they could shoot me :-)

That was a good looking candelabra! I remember having one not to unlike in one cottahe i used to rent. Since I had no electricity there it was perfect during dark nights. Nowdays I almost never lit candles, I´m always worried that I will forget to put them out again.

I too hope noone will ever spray paint You :-) :-) :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Joyce!
I really hope Teddy is better now! Even I would forgive You if I got tuna and the best piece of stake :-) :-) :-)

I´ll visit Your blog in a minute or so!
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Aussimade!
I promised myself, when I was Younger, that I would never die until I met a wombat in real life :-)

First time I ever saw one was in an australian soap. I think it was anyway. It was about two persons living together, I don´t know if they were supposed to be married. But anyway, she was a doctor and he was a vet and he had a pet wombat :-) That is all I remember of that soap :-) I think they look wonderful! But I still havent seen one in real life.

It sounds like badgers and wombats are very much alike.

It´s totally impossible to see my dogs in the dark :-) I never knows if I have all three with me when returning home again :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

Hi Diane!
It´s a bit funny really, because this is common things for me. When I go to Your blogs, Your world seeme so fantastic to me :-) :-)

I think we all get a little "home blind" ( swedish saying) when it comes to our own little worlds. Most probably it is just as fantastic no matter where we live, on the countryside or in a city. We just have too look for it :-)
Have a great day now!
Christer.