After work I took the Newfs over to the lake. We saw Buffy there playing fetch the stick in the water. She taught Georgie a thing or two about goofing around in the water, but he was still nervous to go in over his head.
Of course Memphis had a great time too.
Somehow young George found a burr patch. The photo shows all the burrs he managed to get deeply imbedded in his coat. Memphis got a couple but not nearly so bad as George.
Look what came in the mail today! It’s Canadian Folk and Country songs with Mac Beattie and his Ottawa Valley Melodiers! How awesome is that? Very awesome, trust me. Tunes include Take me back to the Madawaska Valley, The Washboard Polka, Ross Township’s my Home and more.
From the liner notes:
Making Arnprior, Ontario their home base, Mac and His Melodiers work out of CHOV-TV and Radio in Pembroke, Ont. and CJOH-TV and local radio stations in Ottaw, Ont. They are well known across Canada haveing represented Ottawa on the CTV Cross Canada Barndance Show and from their personal appearances on Don Messer’s Jubilee They have also made several shows with CBC radio. Mac writes all his songs and more will follow on another LP in the near future. Members of the group are Reg Hill on Fiddle – Gaetan Fairfield on rythmn guitar – Bob Whitney alta sax, Bob Price on piano – Tony Miseferi on bass – Gordie Summers on electric guitar and Mac Beattie with his educated washboard, drums and vocals.
I’m pretty excited about this little foray back in time, friends. Mac Beattie and Reg Hill are mighty in my books. I checked out YouTube to see if there was one of the tunes from this recording waiting there for sharing – I couldn’t find one, so instead, let’s listen to Mr. Beattie’s most famous tune, the Log Driver’s Song.
George and Memphis (and their pal Buffy) splashed around in the lake today but stopped short of going for full swim.
I love this tune. Here’s Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman
How about a version of this one on pipes? Here are Jerry O’Sullivan and Tim Cummings.
And finally here’s Mark Gilston performing it on mountain dulcimer.
Lots of people tell me they would never pick wild mushrooms for the table because they are afraid of being poisoned. I’m OK with this because it means there are more of those tasty mushrooms available for me in local forests.
No doubt there are some nasty, in fact deadly mushrooms in our forests. There are also quite a number of them that will give you a serious belly-ache and a bad case of the runs but won’t kill you. There is really just one rule. Be 100% sure of any mushroom you are eating. And, don’t eat the poisonous ones. If somebody tells you, oh my uncle Bud has eaten these for 30 years and he’s fine, but you can’t identify the mushroom, just don’t eat it. If you are 95% sure of your identification and you’re tempted to think 95% is good enough, just don’t eat it. When it comes to eating stuff I find in the forest, I’m very conservative.
I’ve had many conversations with people who have stories about people with loads of experience picking mushrooms poisoning themselves because the mushrooms they picked and ate looked exactly like the edible mushroom they have been picking and eating for many years. It’s true that there are some poisonous mushrooms that look a lot like tasty edibles, and in fact I avoid any mushrooms that I can’t positively identify 100% of the time. I see some pickers in fall each year picking mushrooms I can’t positively identify. For instance I see people with bags of red Russulas. I can’t tell the difference between the poisonous varieties of red Russulas and the good ones, so I just don’t pick them. Somebody told me these guys do it by taste. Well, good luck to them. Just because they eat them and don’t get sick doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.
Let’s look at one story that was in the news. It’s the story about Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, who managed to poison himself and 4 others. Here’s what Elizabeth Grice wrote in the Telegraph
Evans is a knowledgeable countryman who’d enjoyed mushroom expeditions since he was a boy. He’d been told just the place to find ceps and chanterelles and came back with a basketful of what he thought were Boletus edulis, or ceps. He was greeted like a returning hero. “Fantastic!” they said. No one noticed they were the deadly webcap, Cortinarius speciosissimus, a mushroom that damages the liver, kidneys and spinal cord. No one consulted the fungi guidebook in the kitchen.
“It had been 10 years since I’d picked ceps and I thought: these are a bit more ginger-coloured than I remember. I didn’t spot the crucial difference – that they had gills and ceps don’t.”
This apparently really happened. This guy needed a kidney transplant because he picked and ate wild mushrooms without paying any attention to identification. All boletes have pores on the under side of their caps. Cortinarius have gills. This is one of the first things you notice when you see a mushroom. Does it have pores? Does it have gills? Does it have teeth? It’s the very beginning of any attempt to identify a mushroom.
I can identify a good number of tasty edible mushrooms with certainty. I can also identify some of the nastiest killer mushrooms. Between those two groups are many, many species of mushrooms. I can identify some of them but many of them I can’t identify with certainty (and in some cases I can’t even get close). I keep trying to learn more species each year because it interests me, but but some mushrooms are very tricky to ID.
Some people have allergies to some wild mushrooms. Assuming you’ve identified the mushroom with certainty, but you’ve never eaten it before, cook up and eat a small amount and see how your body reacts before having a full meal of them.
This has been a busy Saturday – I’ve been on the go most of the day. But I didn’t want to miss the opening of YM Whelan’s exhibition at Yumart (101 Spadina Toronto). Yvonne has put together a great collection of new paintings. Lots of old and newer friends out at the opening. I was only able to stick around for a beer and a little good conversation – but I’ll be able to get a closer look at Yvonne’s exhibition when I bring my paintings in, since my solo show is next up at Yumart (April 26 mark your calendars).
Wahoooo! They’re very very good.
Long Branch is more or less chopped in two by Lakeshore Blvd. South of Lakeshore, Long Branch ends at Lake Ontario and north of Lakeshore it dead ends at the railway tracks. This morning we took the dogs for a walk as far north as we could go, then west along a pleasant parkland trail that runs north of the houses but south of the tracks. It looks like an industrial area north of the tracks. I don’t think I’ve every explored around up there. Here’s a couple photos from the south side of the tracks looking north. There is quite a bit of rail traffic up there by the way. We saw two GO trains whizz by during our walk.
27th Street 