> Had an interesting weekend for once (unlike the usual boring ones I have :-). It started off gung-ho towards techno geekdom, then was followed immediately by a jump straight into forest-wilderness mode.
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> Yesterday Saturday, we went to the Grand Opening of a local Bureau en Gros (business office supplies) superstore. As part of the many specials, they were offering 10 Palm Pilot III's for $99 instead of for the usual $300 CAN. Well, we figured that getting there 2½ hrs before opening would be sufficient time to secure a Palm III organizer. Wrongo. There were 350 people in line by the time we got there! Turns out the first 5 people showed up 6 HOURS early and the next 5 were there 4½ hours early. Well, at least we got 1000 sheets of free printer paper, scotch tape, a map of the world, and a reasonable leather briefcase.
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> After that, we then headed up north to see Dave's parents and survey the extent of tree damage to their cottages, due to the mini-tornado-like conditions in the last month. There is a huge 90 ft hemlock pine slowly falling into Dave's grandparents' house; it's too difficult for us to remove ourselves. So we've all decided to pay to get it taken down professionally. It costs $400 to take a tree that size down. My aunt- and uncle-in-law are going to have 7 trees taken down around their house for a total of $2000 (shudder). For all our reliance and confidence in technology, it is still possible to be imperiled by something as simple as a tree.
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> My father-in-law and I paddled across Slavery Lake to return the tree-climbing equipment to the neighbours. The day was cool and calm; the water was surprisingly warm for this time of year, in that lake. There were many bullfrog tadpoles and lily pads in the swamp end of Slavery, which shows there is still much life in it. I give thanks for these blessings.
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> Today I went hunting for wild mushrooms -- Autumn with cool weather and moist moss is a good time. Two weeks ago I had noticed Cep, or Boletus edulis (known as the King of Mushrooms) in the area. Edible Boletes are a unique species which have *white* stems and spongy "pores" on the underside of their white-yellow caps, rather than gills. Unfortunately when I went to check them out, they seemed to have disappeared and turned into so-called Bitter Bolete. I wonder if they are the same species depending on the weather conditions? Anyway, we settled instead for Honey Mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), which have to be carefully identified because they cover several species that vary in size and colour. They taste like store-bought Oyster Mushrooms except better (a sweetened slightly hay-like flavour). Nice when lightly-fried in a cream sauce. Now the only question nagging in my mind is: I picked the Honey Mushrooms from the base of a hemlock stump; could they have become poisonous because of hemlock pine sap? Why on earth are Tsuga pines and lacy meadow Poison Hemlocks, totally unrelated species, both called "hemlock"? Oh well...if Dave and I keel over, I'll be sure to let you know. :-)

You must be a student of mushrooms. Have you ever run across the name "William Alfonso Murrill?" In his early days, very early in this century, he worked at the New York Botanical Gardens, about 1930 he exlorered the Amazon basin looking for undiscovered saprophites (sp?) and a then spent his golden years, about 40 of them, as a professor of botany at the U of Florida. He was known as "Mr. Mushroom" and was at one time listed in Who's Who as the world's foremost expert on mushrooms. He taught my father, his nephew, how to distinguish edible mushrooms from the other kind. For many years, wild mushrooms showed up in our Sunday night stew and nobody ever got sick. "Uncle Will" died in the 1950's. I remember reading in his journals where he met William Bebe at a camp on the Amazon River. Seems like a strange place for an oceanographer!
Howard