weekend in a waterbed lounge chair

 this trailer-park-fabulous setup cost me less than $20 (thanks, china!) and kept me cool the last few 95+ degree days. you know you want one.

 i had a feeling the chickens were going to figure out the doggy door eventually. they're always trying to get inside--they frequently gather at the doorstep and peck at the plastic door. i'm not sure how long they'd been hanging out in the mudroom when i heard clucking and went back to find all three of them in there, standing at the door to the kitchen.

 friday night jason and i had an impromptu apricot adventure in horseshoe bend. we've gone to this tree every summer for the last three years.

 normally i'm the one who butt-slides down the hill to get to the best fruit, but this year i was wearing a skirt, so j went for it.

 he took it a step further and monkey-footed up the tree to get the VERY best fruit. this made me a little nervous. not only is this tree clinging to the side of an incredibly steep, tall hill with lots of jagged rocks below, and thin breakable branches, but we were in the middle of a super windy thunderstorm. he made it out fine, though.

 the sky on the way back was dramatic. we drove up to the cemetery and watched the rain fall over the hills.

 then we met some horse friends, and i got my favorite horse picture ever!

 saturday morning i pilfered my parents puggle for a happy puppy playdate with cam's pups.

 the two dogs were a bit overwhelming for scout. they were too big and loud and scary, even though they just wanted to play and be best friends. DESPERATELY wanted those things. hugo had to sit out the party inside.

 scout is the puggle's official name. they went through dozens of ideas before settling--the naming process took almost a month. my favorite name was mucho. i still call him that. el mucho poocho! but ultimately my mom wanted to name him after the little girl from to kill a mockingbird.

 back to work tomorrow. i got a lot of nothing done this long weekend and i'm feeling pretty good about it.

sunday morning sunrise over the snake river, king hill, idaho

what's so fungi? (oral morels!)

the forest floor in mccall is exploding with mushrooms. i picked nearly 40 morels this weekend.

some of them are enormous!

i’d never cooked or eaten fresh morels before, so i did what i usually do with food i’ve never tried: sauté with olive oil, salt and pepper. a lot of juice comes out at first, then the liquid cooks down and gets partially reabsorbed as they cook longer, about five minutes over medium heat seemed right to me. they were super delicious, very reminiscent of longneck steamers with lots of broth, dipped in melted butter.

i also picked a few very large white puffballs...

and i found five artist conks (ganoderma applanatum polypore mushrooms). the largest is almost a foot wide. now i need to think of what to draw on them.

i hiked through the woods for hours, mostly in the morning and evening when the light was best. and guess what: i encountered A FUCKING BEAR. this morning i was getting pretty deep into the forest and suddenly i got this weird feeling, so i looked up and looked around a bit…didn’t see anything. still felt kinda funny, so i made some noise, looked around a bit more, and there was A FUCKING BEAR. a medium-size brown bear, less than a hundred yards away. i got the hell out of there.

i saw more false morels than real ones. it was frustrating. i wished they would just try a little harder and become real morels.

i didn’t bring a mushroom identification book with me, but i had a feeling this kind (above) was edible. i found four of them, the largest over a foot wide. so i took a cell phone picture and sent it to jason knowing he had just borrowed a guide from someone, and he tried to look it up for me but said it was hard to tell from the photo.

since i only had a hunch to go on i didn’t pick them. when i got home i was thinking, “those really looked like coral,” so i googled “coral mushrooms.” i love it when things have really obvious names! turns out they are indeed edible.

these are some kind of jelly fungus, another very sensible name given their jiggly, gummy, gelatinous texture.

“orange peel cup mushrooms” (aleuria aurantia)--saw these all over the place.

i can’t wait to post more photos from my trip. the last time i was up there was in january. this time it was only two and a half days but i crammed in a lot of activity.