The "fruits" of today's morning morel mosey in Garden Valley, with mom and dad and Rachel and Emily.
Below, one location we
didn't find any mushrooms. Apparently we're supposed to be very secretive about where we
did find them. Hint: shady mountainside. This one is clearly too sunlit. Also dappled and drowsy.
We didn't really know what we were doing, but Rachel, having some experience in mushroom-wrangling, led the way in finding the elusive prey. Here she is scoping out potential targets.
These next photos are from back at the ranch. See if you can spot the young great horned owl in this photo. The older owl was perched beside it, and unhelpfully flew off minutes before, to parts unknown. You should probably read Farley Mowat's
Owls in the Family. It's really short (80 pages, I think) and a good story of a boy with his two pet owls. For some reason I had thought it was a true story of the author's childhood. So I was confused, rereading it this weekend, when the narrator's friends called him "Billy" instead of "Farley". And just now I realized it was just a story. Still good, though.
I don't think I'd ever seen a killdeer nest before, but dad found this one in the open field by the house. We were walking down to check out the owls, and a bird was acting obnoxious, trying to get us to move away from our current spot, so after just a little looking, he saw this little nest. And so we had scrambled eggs with our mushrooms. Just kidding. We had the mushrooms the next day.
And a bonus photo: Rosie the dog taking Emily for a walk.
On Saturday we got fresh corn from the farmers market. Here's a picture of Esther enjoying it for lunch.
