Get off my pond!

Yesterday featured a meander around Ogden Water a Yorkshire Water reservoir managed as a country park by Calderdale Council. And the Council do a good job of managing - we met a litter picker on the path so they're keeping up to it at the weekend and the place is well kempt with paths and fences right for the rural setting. And we didn't mind too much that it was spitting with rain and rather breezy. Especially since in the woods that's broken up through the trees.

So there we were meandering through, breathing in the great smell of a damp pine wood, listening to the chaffinches shouting their heads off (it always amazes me that such a loud noise can come from such a tiny body) and we arrive at the little pond beyond the bridge at the head of the reservoir. Last time we were there it was a lovely domestic scene with mum and half-a-dozen ducklings swimming about in the still water.

This time it was a different picture, the cute bliss of the ducklings had gone and was replaced with this chap:

And when a couple more mallard drakes arrived his response was:

Get off my pond!

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Friday Fungus: Report on a mushroom hunt

Last Sunday saw me - and about 20 others - tramping through the woods around Ogden Water, a great little country park in the South Pennines. This was Slow Food West Yorkshire's Annual Mushroom Forage and a splendid (if ever so slightly damp) occasion it was too culminating with an outdoor feast on the foraged goodies pictured above. All this was made possible by the expert input of wild food expert and herbalist, Jesper Launder.

For those interested in the details of the feast:

Included there is the grisette (with the delightful latin name, Amanita vaginata). This is the tall, white-stemmed one with the steel grey cap. Quite why the mushroom acquired the same name as a female french peasant of loose morals is something of a mystery to me. But the latin name is simply descriptive since vaginata means sheath and describes the sac from which the mushroom springs.

There are two deceivers in the pile - plain ones (Laccaria laccata) and amythyst ( Laccaria amethystea) ones. The little chaps were pretty abundant but there's no jolly stories about them - they're just good to eat!

Finally there are honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea) and conifer stump mushrooms - both of which I'd come across but didn't know we could eat.

We also identified a load of other mushrooms edible, inedible and poisonous - some of which will feature in future episodes of the Friday Fungus!

All in all a fine afternoon's effort, a real education and a great feast!

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The mist....

The mist wanders like some slightly inebriated ghost across the water as the sun - what little there was - falls down in the sky. The water is still - unblemished by ripple or splash. Revealed is a new wonderland - there reflected in the mirrored surface.

Moon, stars, trees, birds, buildings. And around the corner - beyond the edges of your eyes? Maybe there we'll find naiaids, kelpies and the wonderful water dragon. This isn't just the world of imagination - it is the twilight world we glimpse just occasionally when we stop our mad parade, our obsession with numbers, with facts, with the stomping prose of business.

That world contains something of the truth we are missing. The reason we are unfulfilled, unsatisfied by the pleasures the modern world lays out on its counter.

Which is why we look at the South Pennine views - at Ogden Water - take a breath...and feel the strains and stresses of life tumble from our shoulders. We buy the wonder, the magic. Not with the currency of modern commerce but with an older currency. A currency of blessings, of tears, of touching hands. A money we can't see but know is there.

Pennies we can store up but can't spend - except when we stop, take in the view and soak up the magic.

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