It's the day of the quadrennial elections, and we celebrated it by taking a walk in the nearby woods, picking mushrooms with the kids, before voting lefty. It's a good year for shrooms, and we had a basketful in little more than half an hour, only five minutes' bike ride from home. Most of what we found is Gypsy mushrooms. I'm cooking the water out of them now. Here's the kinds we got:
- Gypsy mushroom, Rynkad tofsskivling, Rozites caperata
- Slippery Jack, Smörsopp, Suillus luteus
- Velvet bolete, Sandsopp, Suillus variegatus
- Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum
- Slimy Spike, Citronslemskivling, Gomphidius glutinosus
- Copper brittlegill, Tegelkremla, Russula decolorans
- Green brittlegill, Grönkremla, Russula aeruginea
- Flirt, Kantkremla, Russula vesca
- Terracotta hedgehog, Rödgul taggsvamp, Hydnum rufescens
- Common puffball, Vårtig röksvamp, Lycoperdon perlatum
(I got most of the English names from the excellent
Online Atlas of Fungi in Northern Ireland.)
In the voting room we met a lot of acquaintances, including our friend Eddie the goldsmith. He's a neo-pagan lefty Star Wars fan and a great woodsman. He noted with satisfaction that we had a few brittlegills, and a green glow of avarice lit in his eyes when we showed him the Gypsies -- a species he wasn't familiar with.
Early forecasts for the election results don't look so good: seems we may be saddled with one of our infrequent right-wing governments for four years. But it's no catastrophe. The big Swedish right-wing parties are really pretty decent compared to what you find in other countries. It would have been nice though to get the Christian Democrats kicked out of Parliament. At least we're unlikely to see any crypto-Nazi extreme-right populists there.
[More blog entries about elections, mushrooms, Sweden; valet, svamp.]Labels: elections, mushrooms, Sweden
