Yesterday, during my walk, I made a thrilling foraging find: this big Chicken of the Woods mushroom, which was growing from an oak tree on a residential street next to Baxter Woods, just three blocks from my house. The mushroom is huge; it fills an entire turkey platter, and it's very fresh, clearly having just emerged after the Ida rainstorm. I am ridiculously pleased with myself--not least because foragers tend to haunt Baxter Woods, so there's rarely anything left to find. We had a bit of the mushroom for dinner last night, and today I'll clean and cut up and saute the rest of it, and bag it for the freezer. There's a winter's worth of mushroom right here on this plate.

I've got a bit of desk work to do this morning, and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day with my mushroom and with making stuff for Tom to bring down to Paul tomorrow--banana bread and tomato sauce and such. The truck is back in commission, so the trip is still on, and Paul is always hungry for vegetables and home-cooked food.

It's a cool morning, here in the little city by the sea. Definitely there's a hint of autumn in the air--such a refreshment after our torrid summer. I'm reading the Iliad and some Tessa Hadley short stories and still pecking away at Homesickness, though I may give up on it shortly. I started another poem draft yesterday, which is still at the "eh" stage, but might catch fire eventually. I'm considering taking a quick trip up north while Tom's in NYC, just an overnight, though there will be lots of friends I can't see while I'm up there, because they'll all be at the Harmony Fair, which will be a guaranteed Covid hotspot.

But I am longing for the stars and the air and the owls and the circle of trees silhouetted against the sky.