Wren talks all the time

Most days, Wren and I are alone during the day and so we have only each other to talk to.  Now that Mum is here I realize that Wren talks, a LOT.   He has no sense of verbal space.  If I am talking to Mum he comes up and interrupts without hesitation.

He tells long rambling stories and great explanations for things.  Sometimes I want to record what he is saying and other times I wish there was an OFF switch.

Here are some comments from The World According To Wren:

In case you think Wren has bowed to pressure and become vegetarian, he often tells me:

"I eat meat and vegetarians"

Mum notices that Wren plays video game re-enactments with lego.

"Indy Andy Jones is coming with his guys!" he says.

Here is a typical story, told to Granny when they were playing Lego minifigures:

"All the horrible massive looking guys must be on one side and we want to build a world with hummungous size.  We are making Littlies vs Big.  We put some of these guys on my cake when I was turning three years old. "

Frost and Wren have a love-love-hate relationship.  Wren sticks to Frost like glue.  At times Frost loves this and takes pride in his brother's devotion.  When Frost has finished eating he drifts from the table.  I call him back but before he returns Wren has leapt from his chair (food uneaten) because:

"I must go.  Wherever Frost goes I go!"

When Granny asked him why he must go everywhere, he said "because I LOVE HIM."

On other occasions Frost gets frustrated and wants Wren to leave him alone.  He has discovered that certain malicious glares and gestures terrify Wren but are not strictly violent by parenting standards.  Even a particular stance: legs a bit akimbo, moving slowly (like a zombie) will have Wren running in shrill terror or attacking.  Frost uses these tactics sparingly but to great effect.

This morning, Frost did The Glare and Wren kicked him.

Frost:  Mum!  Wren kicked me in the stomach!
Wren:  Frost kicked me in the stomach!"
Me:  FROST!
Frost:  I did not kick him!
Me:  What did you do?
Frost:  I looked like this [making an evil grimace]
Me:  Oh.  Well don't scare him.
Wren:  Make Frost GO AWAY.  I need personal space!

Under Siege

At 4.35am I was woken by loud thudding noises in the kitchen.  While half asleep I thought that Joshua was throwing away a lot of garbage. 

"THUD" The noise of a door being closed.
"THUNK" Something falling.
"FWACK WACK ACK"

Suddenly my fogged brain realized that there were raccoons in the kitchen.

I shook Josh and we staggered out into the dark kitchen.  There were scuffling sounds and some more WACK WACKS as they escaped through the cat door.  Looking around we saw that they had been trying to get into the big catfood storage bin which has a latched lid.   I stuffed some sofa cushions in front of the cat door and a short while later spotted one on the deck trying again.

Really fed up with raccoons this morning.

Chickens in the garage

At dusk, the raccoon family returned to try and eat our last chicken, Ruby.

Joshua ran out waving a shovel and nearly hit one.   He maintains that things like raccoons and deer are very cute until you live with them around and they eat your chickens, vegetables and poop on the garden.  Then they become verminous beasts.

Half an hour later Mum popped out to check and they were back:  a mother and 3 adolescents.  Mum yelled for me to get her a rock "I am very good at throwing things!" she said.

I turned on the hose and Josh squirted the mother but she wouldn't leave her youngsters who were hanging in the tree to see what we would do.  Josh squirted them while I pointed them out with a flashlight.

After we had (finally) chased them off we checked the run perimeter and found that they had already dug down a number of inches at the door (now reinforced) and side fence  (double wired).

Josh said he would check on Ruby every half hour but I still felt anxious so we decided to let her roost in the garage for a few nights while we conduct a test of our raccoon defenses.  That means, in the morning we will see whether the raccoons have made it into the run and/or the coop.

We hope they haven't but either way, Ruby is safe.  She is roosting on a nice 2x2 supported by a ladder and a couch with newspaper underneath. 

We are tempted to keep our chicken in the garage forever.

Chicken Funeral

This morning, after googling "how deep bury chicken," we had a brief but poignant funeral for our chickens Sylvia and Chippy, killed by raccoons last night.  Wren made drawings of rainbows and Josh put them in paper bags labeled with their names.  They were good chickens.  They died too young - as mere adolescents - and I feel we failed them by not reinforcing the door enough.

Since she arrived, Mum has been saying "the raccoons could get in here or the raccoons could get under here."   She turned out to be right.

There are signs of digging all around the perimeter of the coop where Joshua had laid chicken wire underground.  The place they finally got in is under the gate where the chicken wire was left off to enable the gate to move freely.  It seems as if they pushed in a section of gate and then pulled the chickens out underneath.

Ruby survived.  We are very pleased about that.  However, she has decided we are her flock and tried to roost on the back of a kitchen chair at dusk.  We have put her back in the coop (cleaned, as it had blood spatter and clumps of feathers) and have reinforced the gate, locked the nesting coop area (an interior coop that is more secure) and hope to find a friend for Ruby within the week.

Chickens killed

We have had a very sad early morning.  I woke in the half-light and saw that Syliva was dead on the lawn.   Chippy was nearby.  Raccoons had got into the coop by digging under the door and pushing through the wire.  They ate a bit of them and left their bodies with feathers everywhere. 

We are all very sad, except Wren.  Frost and I are crying.  Frost wants to shoot raccoons with a BB gun.   Josh is wondering what to do now and Wren is making up scenarios about how the raccoons killed the chickens and how we could put up gargoyles to scare away raccoons.

Josh is considering a chicken funeral.

We now have one surviving chicken - Ruby.

We need another young chicken to live with her.  

I don't think you can keep only one chicken. 

Foraging again (and again and again)

Last weekend, on Vashon, I got stung harvesting nettles without gloves.  You may have tried the fabulous nettle and mushroom soup that Jerry Traunfeld serves at his restaurant from time to time. Walking in the Vashon forest there were so many nettles along the path that I immediately thought of this soup so Mum devised a glove of a knotted a plastic bag and I snipped them off with my pocketknife.

Unfortunately,  plastic grocery bags are rather thin so after a while the nettles stung through the plastic and I had to add an additional plastic bag until the packet was full.   For many hours my hands had strange tingling sensations, like pins and needles on the surface.   The soup was fabulous.   The recipe calls for button mushrooms but, having no portabellos, we made it with chanterelles.

Chanterelles, huckleberries and nettles from Vashon

Did I mention that we found another basket of chanterelles?  And more huckleberries?  We had 8 cups of huckleberries (huckleberry de-storking is the dark side of berry stalking).  This evening, Mum made a souffle and I helped her make huckleberry jam. 

Chanterelle and Backyard Chicken-egg souffle

Huckleberry Jam

Snoqualmie Trails
Fast forward till today - Friday - when we went up to the Snoqualmie area for a hike and forage.  The weather has been beautiful.  Crisp and bright and only one recent day of rain.  As we drove past North Bend we could see that there had been the faintest dusting of snow on the high stands near the treeline.  Getting out of the car coming from Seattle it was surprisingly cold - we were glad for our gloves and woolen hats.

Wren with a bolete (probably mirabilis)

Mushroom Foraging Permits
On the way we stopped at the North Bend Rangers station to apply for a mushroom foraging pass.  The passes are free but required if you are going to the National Forest with the intent to obtain mushrooms.  If you are hiking or camping you can gather up to a gallon on a whim - but if you are off with your mushroom knife and baskets, you need a permit.

To get a permit, you need your drivers license and the car registration.  You have an annual allocation of 5 gallons per applicant but you don't need to take that all at once.  You choose how many you want and then have 14 days in which to harvest it.  I spoke to the Ranger about it and she said that the major focus right now is on getting foragers to apply for the permit.  Most people just gather what they want under the "one gallon per person" understanding.  She said they are trying to explain that one gallon does not apply if you are meaning to collect mushrooms - its only allowed if you are in the park for another purpose (much as firewood gathering is allowed while camping but one isn't allowed to come to the park to gather firewood for your house without a permit).  She mentioned that they are working on ways to make the process easier and on recording what people gather.  Right now you don't need to hand in the completed permits.

So, we got a permit.

Nobody asked to see our permit but it was a good feeling to have one.  By contrast, when Tara and I found the chanterelles we hadn't got a permit (but we were in the woods for another purpose, hey?) and we felt a bit sneaky.  Well, I did.  It was good to be open and relaxed about our baskets and purpose and to talk to other park users about collecting mushrooms.

We also bought an annual Forest Pass to park at trailheads.  That was $30.

Today, we gathered different mushrooms.  We found a few chanterelles but many angel wings (a slighter version of the oyster mushroom).  Also, we were a few days or perhaps one week late for a huge flush of honey mushrooms.  I have never harvested honey's so I had to take a few a bit past their prime for identification at the PSMS Mushroom Show tomorrow.

Yes, the show is tomorrow!

Its late.  More stories tomorrow....

Drawing on Halloween

Wren is drawing at the kitchen table.  Yesterday, he discovered coloring in the lines and is now coloring everything he draws.   He loves to draw with sharpie - big bold outlines.

Coloring in at The Hardware Store

Wren:  This guy's bad.  I am making all the guys BAD. 

Granny:  Why are you making them bad?  Where are the good guys?

Wren:  There are NO good guys.  Except for Halloween.

Granny:  (who persists in a modern view of good and evil rather than the post-Cold-War, post-modern complexity) There are always good guys.  The good guys come and chase the bad guys away.

Wren:  No, this is specially for HALLOWEEN.   All the evil guys came and Feated them and chased them away.  They have SPELLS.  They have Freeze, Melt and so they did all that when they see a good guy and the chase-ed them away.

[Wren colors some more.]

Wren:  You color them in with YELLOW they are EVIL.  So this guy is yellow.]

[Silence and deep thought]

Wren:  Well, the scorpion thing is good.  I am going to be a Superhero for Halloween.  Actually, I am going to be a Good Archer. 

[Long pause of drawing]

Wren:  Actually, the scorpion guy is BAD.  He is the Boss.   I need another piece of paper. 

"This is the Bad Rock Monster
and his little Ninja Friends."

Shannon:  Who is this guy with teeth?

Wren:  He is a Rock Monster.   He is the Bad rock Monster.

[Long pause where the only sound is the pen squeaking on paper]

Wren:  I need more paper.

Granny:  One sheet or two sheets?

Wren:  Two sheets.   I am drawing a big Boss Knight with all his little knights. 

[Long pause while drawing.  I am typing.  Granny is trying to order David a sweater on Superdry.com but it keeps redirecting her to the US site.]

Wren:   Now I am ready to decorate.  I need scissors.

[Scissors materialize.  His wish is Granny's command]

I am cutting out the rock monster

Wren [cutting while singing]:  Halloween dot com.  Halloween dot com.  Halloween dot com.  Hallow BOOM.  Halloween BOOM.  Halloween wah wah wah wha!   Where is my tape?

[Tape appears]

Wren runs into his bedroom still singing.

Wren:  I get some more Halloween decorations!

"This shows about putting up my Halloween Decorations
The Boss Bruno, Scorpion H and The Boss Finest Scorpion Mage"

Vashon Vacation - The Fungi Thing Again

We are over on Vashon for a few days watching ships going by and eating chanterelles, again.  Having Mum here during fungi-season has raised my enthusiasm exponentially.  Now I have someone to go on hikes with, encourage my identification and most importantly eat the mushrooms.  Having two adults keen on fungi has convinced Wren that mushroom foraging is an important life skill and he is willing to come out into the forest and Find Mushrooms, carry a basket and Dentify them.

Wren setting off to forage on Vashon

 This morning we went hunting in Island Center Forest where we collected huckleberries and were stung by nettles (me).  It was somewhat nerve wracking because the forest was open for hunting.  We wore bright orange vests provided at the parking lot and made a lot of noise as we stomped through the forest. In the distance we heard gunshots from time to time and Joshua told us that "many people get shot by mistake each year."  Apparently, season is now open for shotguns and handguns although it will be suspended on October 15th.

Perhaps the threat of being killed had kept foragers away because there were many huckleberries and chanterelles to be had.

I gather huckleberries to the sound of gunshots

Wren was concerned about dogs but not guns. 
He carried the huckleberry basket

While crouching in the undergrowth we
made lots of noise to show we were not deer.

Huckleberries and a few blackberries for pie.

Mum and Wren show that they are Not Bears or Deer
because forest animals do not like orange

 Back at the house (and at home) we have been vigorously identifying mushrooms, possibly edible or not.  Today, we identified Boletus Flaviporous, Phlebia Tremellosa and the birch bolete (a splendid specimen).  I have a small sketch book which I do rough diagrams in and then write in identification notes.  This is mainly about remembering features and names and has helped me to learn a number of new mushrooms recently.  I still covet a microscope but I believe that the type required to see spores (for identification of many mushrooms) is pretty expensive. 

Mushroom identification after the Hood Canal trip

I do not know what this one is... perhaps a lactarius?
It has an interesting velvet furred stem.

 After we survived hunting season and had hunted our mushrooms, we headed to the Vashon Rosterie coffee shop and enjoyed one of those delicious spinach and feta croissants.  I paid a visit to the bookshop on Vashon Highway and bought a copy of Chanterlle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares by Greg Marley.  He is an East Coast author so lacks a bit of the NW Fungal culture, but it captures the spirit of fall and is about mushrooms in culture rather than their identification so its a fun counterpoint to Mushrooms Demystified for which I require google on hand to define botanical terms.

Coming home tomorrow after a drive down to Burton.  Mum and I plan on having one more walk in the woods but without the intent to crawl through huckleberries.

Chanterelles with Company

On Friday, we headed over to Hood Canal to hunt mushrooms.  The expedition was in search of FUNgal Knowledge but we allowed that we would gather chanterelles if they were in evidence. 

They were!

Shannon and Tara disheveled from crawling through huckleberry undergrowth

First, we had trouble leaving the parking lot because there were so many mushrooms to observe and collect.  These were not species I was sure of although there were many russula which I have reason to believe were the edible brevipes.   Wren is obsessed with gathering mushrooms and tells me he is going to be a scientist when he grows up, "the kind of scientist who Dentifies Mushrooms not Volcanoes".

Gathering along the path

For "Dentification" by Wren

He draws wonderful pictures of mushrooms with stems and caps and sometimes gills or dots (for boletes) and as he collects mushrooms he tells us that "These are eat-poisonous not touch-poisonous" and puts them in his basket.

"Look at the BIGGIE!"

 By contrast, Alex was only concerned with edible mushrooms and kept his basket empty "for chanterelles."  When we came to chanterelle country Alexander was keen to have every chanterelle that was found put in his basket and soon had a good pile, collected one by one.  Later, we came to thickets where white chanterelles were fairly abundant, often under logs and underbrush, growing more sparsely than the yellow chanterelles we found before but much larger and in beautiful condition.

We collected many and Tara, Mum and I became very excited and crawled and thudded through the underbrush in chase.  Tara and I are both enthusiastic foragers and ignored the needs of children and family in order to clamber through the forest after our 'trail of mushrooms'.   Aware of the chance of being lost, from time to time we yelled "we're here!" but I doubt anyone lost track of us with all the callooing and hollering:

Tara:  "I have found The Mother!"
Shannon "I have found her Sister!"
Tara:  "The Mother!"
Shannon:  "Crawl, Frost, crawl!"
Frost:  "I am NOT CRAWLING.  IT IS PRICKLY.  Get me OUT OF HERE!"
Shannon:  "No Frost, you can DO IT!"
"Waa waaa waa"  <---- Wren
Tara:  "FRED, bring the basket.  HERE FRED!"
Fred:  "How did you get in there?"
Shannon:  "You crawl, its really clear about 18" from the ground."
Tara:  Oh, FRED, over here.  You must bring it closer!
Shannon:  "We should send the children in.  Alex, here is one for you."
Alex: "How do you get in there?"
Shannon:  "Creep and crawl!"

Frost:  "I am getting OUT of HERE"

Foraging for a Big One

Success!

Bremeton Ferry Yesterday

Frost recalls, "I was actually really scared of feeding the seagull because when we were trying to feed them they snatched the food very quick and I had a small piece of cracker in my hand and I was holding it up and the seagull JUST MISSED IT one time and I could actually hear his beak snapping shut!"

Close enough to hear the snapping of a seagull's beak.

Alex was also part of the seagull feeding.  Frost and he ran all over the ferry looking for bits of food to feed the seagulls.  At one point they were crawling (bare footed) under the chairs looking for crackers.  They looked like urchins. 

At one point Frost and Alex asked me for 15c.  "Someone gave me a dime," said Alex.  People are always giving Alex money!  They bought one small packet of saltines from the cafeteria and then fed them to the gulls.  When Alex had one left but Frost had none there was an 'argument' over the remaining cracker.  Frost felt that some prior sharing demanded recompense.

But that's NOT FAIR.  I gave you some of mine!

Wren wanted to be part of the adventure and rushed after the boys.  When they went too quickly he came back in tears and I escorted him to find them. 

"I must ALWAYS FOLLOW THE BOYS!" said Wren, who considers himself a diminutive 9 tween.  "I love the boys!"

"I must ALWAYS follow the boys"

The chocolate box shot of Seattle