Category: wildlife

countryside · in the woods · wildlife

October and it’s toadstool time

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)14 Comments

Autumn has continued drifting in on the breeze here, bring subtle shifts to the colour balance of the countryside. Many trees are now resplendent with rich gold and red leaves, some are yet to peak in beauty, and some trees still have leaves that are a very tired shade of green. Every week there is a noticeable change in the scenery on our walks and once again many of our familiar paths are already obscured by fallen leaves.  The weather has turned cooler and damp with frequent rain, a welcome shift to more recognisably English weather and the perfect conditions for toadstool spotting, as they really need a little rain to be at their best. For the rest of the month there will be different kinds of toadstools popping up and I look forward to seeing new things emerging on our walks each week.

There is a wonderful aroma that emanates from a damp autumn wood, a mingling of the smells of rich earth, of gently decaying leaves and of the scent from toadstools. Some toadstools do actually smell quite distinctly, in particular Clitocybe odora, commonly known as the blue green anise mushroom (pictured just above), there have been a lot of these this year; Tricholoma saponaceum, also known as the soap-scented toadstool or soapy knight; and the aptly named stink horn, not one that you would choose seek out for obvious reasons.

Thank you so much for all of the kind messages to Amy, things are still quite difficult for her, but she has started a journey now that will hopefully lead her to a happier and more settled place through some support and therapy.

Well that’s all from me today, words are eluding me a little at the moment and I need a little more woodland medicine to find the flow of them again. I hope to be back later in the month as the photogenic season of autumn continues to settle over the woods and countryside,

Look after yourself and those that you love, I hope you can hug them every day, J x

countryside · general stuff · in the woods · wildlife

September/early October: And the arrival of Autumn

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)22 Comments

 

Autumn is arriving here, with all of its mellow, golden beauty and the leaves are just beginning to change colour. It is one of my most favourite times of the year. Although walking in the woods is a beautiful and enriching experience whatever the season:

  • In winter they are cold, silent and skeletal, but oh so atmospheric, and the architectural shapes of the trees against the sky can be seen and admired;
  • The Spring they come alive with birdsong, the new leaves are a bright impossible green, and bluebells beautify the woodland floor and scent the air;
  • In summer they are a cool place to enjoy respite from the heat, and the woodland floor is dappled and pretty with a sprinkling of sunlight through the dense canopy of leaves overhead,

But it is in Autumn that I find the woods at their most magical and fascinating, and that is due to the beauty of the autumn leaf colours, the quality of the light and the profusion of wonderful fungi that emerge and fleetingly exist under the trees.

There’s not much fungi sprouting yet, just a few springing up here and there in the damper patches of the wood, but with rain forecast over the next week the majority should begin emerging soon.

September signals the start of spider season too and all along the hedgerows a host of big orb weaver spiders are sat fatly in the centre of their webs. They look like they are floating in mid air until the sunlight glints off of the silken strands and highlights the intricate pattern. And the hedgerows themselves are absolutely laden and bountiful. This year is a ‘mast year’ meaning that trees and shrubs are co-ordinating and producing an unusually large quantity of fruits, berries and nuts, possibly in response to weather conditions throughout spring and summer, or perhaps from a more mysterious connection between their root systems or pheromones, it is not fully scientifically understood yet, leaving us free to still believe in a little magic going on out there in the woods 🙂

At home there is knitting, of course, but there is very little in the way of pattern writing going on here for me. Things have been a little difficult of late. I don’t often mention Amy here on the blog anymore, because although she is still living with us and our stories are still very much intertwined, it feels an invasion of her privacy to write about her. It is after all her privilege to share her own story with those that she is personally comfortable with. But I am going to say that this has been such a tough month for her, she has had to contend with physical health issues, which have led to mental health issues too. It has been so hard to watch her struggle and be able to do little more than try to comfort her. I so hope that she can overcome her struggles and get back on an even keel again and continue her journey towards building an independent life for herself. The path from adolescence to adulthood is never an easy one, but it feels like it is harder than ever for our young people now.

After a few planned solo trips out to the woods with my camera I hope to be back with some toadstool pictures later in the month. I am craving the peace and comfort that being out there alone brings me, and look forward to having the space and time to calm my racing thoughts and concentrate only on what I see, hear and smell in my woodland sanctuary.

I hope you have a good couple of weeks and get some time to spend on the things that you love,

J x

countryside · crafts & knitting · in the woods · wildlife

August: Autumn comes early

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)86 Comments

 

Hello there, this is the first blog post from my new blogging home over on wordpress (all previous posts are copies from my former typepad blog), so if you are a subscriber and receiving it by email I have my fingers crossed that this reaches you, and finds you well.

At the beginning of August we had a return to hot and dry conditions here and that has once again had a big impact on the woods and countryside, accelerating season change. As Toby and I walk through the woods now, great drifts of leaves are loosened from the trees at the slightest breath of breeze. But they are not like the leaves that normally fall in autumn, instead they are baked brown, sun-shrivelled and dry as paper. Each footfall sounds a crisp crunch and there is no hope of us surprising any unsuspecting wildlife for a brief encounter, as they hear us coming a mile away.

Autumn come so soon, leaves me feeling a little melancholy. Summer has been harsh this year, and so tough on the trees and wildlife. Everything has been hanging on, rather than flourishing.

One of the nice things though about late summer wood walks is finding feathers, pine cones and other discarded treasures from the forest floor. This year I’ve added to my feather collection with a host of spotted woodpecker feathers, all found together from a kill, most likely a sparrowhawk; a couple of pheasant feathers; a long green woodpecker feather; and lots of tawny owl feathers. I also found a beautifully speckled moorhen egg along the riverbank. And already there are a lot of fungi appearing in the woods, some of them like the ‘chicken of the woods’ sulphur polypore are rather spectacular, you don’t get a sense of scale in the photo above but it was easily 2ft across. I’m hoping it will be a good season for fungi as I get quite excited to see all the different types that appear in the woods around us.

Back at home I’ve been knitting lots again: socks and a little neckerchief scarf in autumny colours; and I’ve also been making some animals to photograph for new front covers of my earlier patterns: the rabbits, elephants, foxes and mice. I’ll keep you posted about progress and updates to the existing patterns.

My main focus at the moment though is getting my images permanently imported into the old blog posts in this new blog home (as images will otherwise disappear at the end of september when typepad shut down)

So far I am making good progress, all of my tutorial posts now have secured images, and every single post from July 2025 to January 2023 also now have permanent images. Next I will be prioritising posts about knitting and patterns and then my nature and wildlife posts (you can find all of these categories and more on the sidebar of my blog page). I will be working backwards chronologically and will not stop until the majority of my blog posts have permanent images. I am pretty sure I now have all of the images saved in order to be able to achieve that.

If you have any favourite posts of mine that you would also like me to prioritise please do let me know in the comments above (scroll to the top of the post or reply to the emailed version of this blog post to leave a comment). I will do my best to accommodate any requests.

Well, I’ll be back later in the month, I still have a pending post about knitted decreases, the companion piece to my knitting increases post earlier this year, I hope to finish that soon and I will be pattern writing again, though dividing my time between that and blog reconstruction will mean it is a slow process.

Very best wishes and thank you as always for accompanying me on my blogging journey here in my new home, J xx