Here’s a lovely scene from our Mother’s Day hike at Harriman State Park. The apple trees were blooming and the fragrance was heavenly. I was hoping to find morels, but there wasn’t one in sight. There hadn’t been any rain in weeks, so it wasn’t that surprising.
Category Archives: getting out of the city
Morels at last
I have been watching for morels for weeks. I thought I had my hunting timed perfectly, but with the cold winter, the morels were slow to appear. We came up to the Berkshires 2 weeks ago, which was way too early.
But this weekend was perfect. We took three different hikes and found morels at two of them. Yesterday we went to a place where we found them last year. We found about a half a dozen. I was hoping for more. Today we went out and found over twenty! There were a few other people carrying bags with mushrooms, so we knew we weren’t the only ones out looking.
It was hard not to shout when we found one, so we shouted “pickle!” to let each other know when we found one, without alerting other mushroom hunters. Super sneaky, eh? Bet nobody could crack that code!
It was fun to spend so much time in the woods. Now we have to figure out what we’re going to make with them.
Early Foraging
This past weekend Neil and I went out with the NYMS for a morel hunt. The spot is about an hour and change outside of the city. You have to be a member to get directions to this spot!
There wasn’t a morel in sight. It seems as though this hard winter we’ve had has pushed the morel season back a couple of weeks. Not wanting to go home empty handed, I collected a big bag of garlic mustard and some japanese knotweed.
Garlic mustard is a terrible invasive plant, so you are doing everyone a favor by picking as much of it as you can. Forager’s etiquette (not over harvesting native plants) does NOT apply in this case. Garlic mustard leaves are at their tender best before the plant blooms. As with all foraging, please consult a guidebook for identification of plants!
I wanted to make pesto with the greens and followed a recipe I found on a fellow forager’s site. Against my better judgment I used walnuts instead of pine nuts. The whole batch came out too bitter. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s usable.
Japanese knotweed is good right now. It is also terribly invasive. Large bamboo-like stands grow up on the side of streams, roads and in disturbed areas.
The shoots are quite tender at this time of year, so don’t require as much peeling as the older/larger stalks do. Knotweed can be substituted for rhubarb in recipes.
I decided to wait on making the japanese knotweed into anything as I read it freezes well. And because my pesto was such a stellar failure. I washed it carefully as it seems to attract large numbers of ants.
Strip off the leaves and chop into 1″ pieces. Then freeze.
Although we didn’t find any mushrooms, there were still plenty of lovely natural things to look at. We saw crows chasing a great horned owl out of its tree. 
Beautiful spring ephemerals were blooming. 
Frost Valley
Recently I went with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop to Frost Valley YMCA. If you live anywhere near Craryville, NY (which is near Woodstock, NY) I recommend going. This weekend was specifically for all kinds of winter activities, which included hikes, ice fishing, tubing, ice cutting (demonstration on how people used to harvest blocks of ice for their ice boxes), etc. The hardest part of the weekend was deciding on which activities to sign up for.
My favorite activities were the hikes of course. This photo was taken on their highfalls hike. The ice on the left was about 100 feet tall and a stunning shade of blue.
Camping in the Berkshires
This past weekend we went car camping in the Berkshires with friends. It was so beautiful and peaceful.
Lindsay was a great help cooking. We made the world’s best s’mores using Little Schoolboy cookies instead of chocolate bars and graham crackers. Lindsay learned how to make a box oven in Girl Scouts and we baked brownies. To make one, you just line a cardboard box with aluminum foil and punch some holes. You place charcoal briquettes in a pan on the bottom (it’s about 30 degrees per piece, so you need about 11-12 coals to bake a normal cake)
And we found loads and loads of choice edible mushrooms while hiking!
Black trumpet mushrooms
Oyster mushrooms
Chicken of the woods mushrooms
Back from Rhode Island
Our annual 4th of July visit with our good friends Jim and Sandi was another vacation chock full of good, clean summertime fun. Our days were spent swimming, boating, steaming clams, grilling and seeing (and lighting) fireworks.
Lindsay, Neil and I enjoyed boogie boarding in the perfect temperature ocean. It was amazing how much more civilized the temperature was at the beach than inland.
Our friends hosted a bbq at their adorable home and my hubby took the sweet picture on the porch.
It was hard to bring this trip to an end, and we even delayed it by visiting friends in CT for a couple of hours on the way home.
Father’s Day
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. We decided to celebrate Father’s Day by going on a bike ride. Lindsay has just gotten comfortable enough riding that we went on a rail trail. We rode on the North County Trail way in Westchester, NY. It runs along the old Putnam Division line, which is parallel to the Saw Mill River Parkway.
It was a very pretty ride through the woods and past swamps and rivers. One stretch had loads of frogs announcing themselves. We dubbed that frog alley. We made many stops to rest tired little legs (she had a bike with no gears) and enjoyed a picnic lunch, a beautiful view from a bridge, and a cookie and cherry break.
We lucked out with the weather as well. It seems as though we now live in the tropics, and get an afternoon downpour every day. But on Sunday, we had the perfect temperature and no rain!
This last view is looking down from the bridge, which had a sign that said “No jumping”. This bridge is low enough to the water (not for me!) that I guess it attracts yahoos. The sign by the much higher Tappan Zee bridge says “Life is worth living” and has a phone number. Yikes!
Oh, and now Lindsay has upgraded from a pink bike to a fierce new black one with gears.
Mother’s Day in the Berkshires
This weekend we went up to my in-laws in the Berkshires. We got in two beautiful hikes in which we searched (to no avail) for morel mushrooms. Although it was disappointing to miss the morels, the gorgeous wildflowers and critters more than made up for it. There were loads of red-spotted newts (also called Eastern Newts). These sweet little guys live in the water when they are tadpoles and adults, but during their juvenile phase (when they are called red efts), they live on land. They are most visible when it is wet out, which it was this weekend.
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- purple trillium
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- red-spotted newt
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- wild ginger
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- woodpecker holes
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- fiddleheads
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- flatbacked millipede
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- trout lily
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- toothwort??
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- old farmland boundary wall
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- red-spotted newt
Spring in the Berkshires
There are many things we love to do when we’re up in the Berkshires. Taking hikes is at the top of the list. It is still a bit early (snow and mud on the ground) to go on the more ambitious hikes, so we decided to take a simple walk along Ice Glen road. At the end of the hike we ran into a woman walking with her puppy. We stopped to talk with her and discovered that she keeps chickens and raises or grows all her own food. She also has a flock of alpacas and spins and weaves the fiber. I mentioned that I spin and she invited us to walk over to her house, where she gave me a trash bag full of her alpaca fiber.
It was crazy how much we had in common with her. She mentioned that she has a son who’s a photographer in Brooklyn. But what put me over the edge was when she said that I could dye the white alpaca and mentioned that she picks wild mushrooms to dye her fiber. She uses turkey tail mushrooms to dye her wool blue. I’m going to have to keep my eye out for them this year.
My new challenge is to process the fiber. I usually buy fiber that has already been washed and carded. I am going to borrow equipment from someone in my spinning group to card it. I’ll post more when I work on the fiber.
I am excited by this new challenge. It was so unexpected to meet such a nice woman and come away with gorgeous, soft alpaca fiber.
Lovely Weekend
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. On Saturday I went with some girls from my Brownie troop to see the last Liberty basketball game of the season. If you haven’t been to a WNBA game, I highly recommend it. The girls enjoyed themselves and unknowingly got a little feminist boost watching women athletes.
Yesterday we went to Harriman State Park. It’s just over an hour out of the city, and comprises miles and miles of varied hiking trails. I first went here with my mushroom hunting group. This time we tried a different trail that led us to a lake. The water was clear and all of us were itching to swim in it. Next year we’ll pick a nice hot summer day, leave the city early and spend some time there.
We had an interesting wildlife sighting while we were hiking. Our friend Kate saw a snake move and then heard a rattling noise. It turns out this 4-foot snake is a timber rattlesnake. We warned people who had dogs about the snake as they approached the area to hilarious results. Most picked up their dogs and were fascinated. One woman completely lost her mind and started shrieking about snakes. I think even her dog rolled its eyes at her.
