by chris c Wed Sep 26 2018, 23:18
Yes I've been catching up on al the walking I didn't do while it was too hot,a succession of beautiful sunny days but cold nights, no frosts here yet.
You could turn an ankle on all the conkers and plane tree seeds on one of the paths in the park. Some of the horse chestnut leaves have gone brown and spotty and totally lacking in the colours they used to be notorious for, this is a disease which had spread here but only showed up late this year, in previous years they have gone brown and dead months earlier.
Lots of berries of all kinds but a lack of wild plums, I suspect the Beast From The East was to blame. Only a few trees have a crop, unlike the sloes which flowered later and have done well this year.
A Chinese friend with a German husband used to pick the wild plums in Germany and make them into jam. When they moved here she was pleased to find lots of small purple plums so she collected them and made jam. Disaster! they were sloes. I suggested she add gin but they were non-drinkers. She fed some to her son, telling him it was medicine . . .I think she threw the rest away. Lesson learned.
I've seen some massive parasol mushrooms
https://www.mushroomdiary.co.uk/parasol-mushroom-macrolepiota-procera/but I'm a bit leery of eating them just in case I'm wrong.