A Short Cut to Mushrooms

This weekend we spent Halloween with the hubby's family in the south and now it is the blog's titular FALL.

This is my first autumn and it can be miserable because it's so cold and damp outside. The mercury drops by the day, the trees shrug themselves naked, but the sky, almost permanently grey, is the perfect backdrop for the dramatic pastiche of colors clinging for dear life on each blackened branch before they all fall to the ground. Everything moves in slow motion as Elliott Smith pulls out his guitar and plays an impromptu concert in my head. 

Mother Nature sure knows how to put on a show.

H sees something interesting hanging from a tree.

It's a rastapple. A rastafarian apple! Harbinger of the fall of Babylon!
Watch it, I'm gonna copyright that.

H's father also set us on a hunt for walnuts. Can you see it hiding?

Hubby started by raking the leaves so he could feel the ground for the nuts.

(Side-note: he's wearing a jumper that says "Manila" on the back!)

But simply looking at the ground worked well for me.

After delivering the nuts of our labor, we went up the hill at the back of the house.

The skeletal remains of an old tractor looked like a nice place to fall asleep.
And I bet that's why it's now rusting in the forest.

I carried this stick in case a long-forsaken templar knight jumped out from behind the bushes 

and H needed defending... and certainly NOT because I was hung over from the night before.

We saw a few mushrooms along the way, but these were the cutest.

Like a cluster of Smurf homes.

And then, we were homeward bound.