I'm heading for a black eye. Working on it. Involuntarily. When I bashed my head on the corner of the kitchen bookshelf at the end of our baking island this morning -- because I was in too much of a hurry to take care, anxious to feed our puppies -- it was closer to the hairline that the smash occurred. But it's steadily working its way down to my left eye. First, of course, was the swelling bump to emphasize the pain. Then the gradual appearance of a bruise. And that bruise keeps creeping downward.

In any event, my effort was in vain. Jackie was so upset at seeing me apply a cold compress to my forehead, seated on the sofa in distress, both of them beside me on either side, consoling me with their concerned licks, that he refused his breakfast in any event. Jillie would no more refuse to eat than to eagerly set off for the moon. My fault. It's been months since I've had an accident, several years since the last disastrous fall in the house. Because, for the most part, I recognize why these things happen to me. Yes, I'm accident-prone, but mostly because I become unheeding, act in haste, forget about caution and being careful.

We'd decided, in view of the rising numbers of COVID cases in the past several weeks in this area, to return to our spring method of grocery shopping early in the morning when it's less likely the supermarket will be full of shoppers. So we showered this morning, fed the puppies a pre-meal snack, then took ourselves off to do the shopping. The store was mostly empty of shoppers and we felt better about that. I thought it would be a small shopping but it wasn't.

When we arrived home, first order of business was placating Jackie and Jillie over our absence, and unpacking everything. My husband, cutting away the thick stalks on the two cauliflowers for economy of space in the refrigerator, cut some florets into small bowls for J&J, and soon we were finished, and I prepared their kibble, giving them canned salmon to top it off for a change. Everything was hurried; my husband always cautions me to slow down. So much for that.

A cold morning at 5C with intermittent sun. It warmed up to 13C by the time we were prepared to go off to the ravine with Jackie and Jillie but by then it was heavily clouded and windy. They were over-excited, leaping about everywhere before we left, tussling with each other and with us. Clearly in need of some outdoor exercise. So off we went, bundling ourselves up against the cold under a now-brooding sky that wouldn't see the sun again this day.

But we had plenty to look at. In fact, everywhere we looked there were new surprises erupting out of the forest floor. More, far more fungi than we've seen in any other year for decades. Some we've never seen before. And some we'd prefer not to see again. But all fascinating. 

Fly agaric

Because we had set out in the early afternoon instead of early morning since we'd gone grocery shopping at the time when we're usually coursing through the ravine's trails, we decided there was no need to take along apple treats for Jackie and Jillie. For the past little while my husband has stopped at one particular point in our circuit to dole out the apple pieces. And that's exactly where Jackie stopped this morning, waiting for his apple treats. None to be had, despite his encouragement of my husband to dig a little deeper in his jacket pocket.

Violet webcap

Not to worry, though apples growing on the wild apple trees have been a scarce commodity this fall, my husband espied one as we ventured along, made his way off trail into the forest and retrieved a nice little apple. And then, bit off little chunks of it, to satisfy his two little doggy companions. It wasn't a particularly sweet apple, slightly sour, but it was crisp and somewhat juicy and they enjoyed it.

Indigo milkcap

Mushrooms? Well, aplenty. The fly agaric we've been seeing so many of lately. And a small crop of bright purple, tiny mushrooms that were entirely new to our experience. They're called violet webcap mushrooms, and it will be interesting in coming days -- if we can remember where we saw them -- to see whether they attain a bit more of a size.

Oyster Mushrooms

Soon afterward my husband saw, glancing into the forest interior, those pale blue mushrooms that always remind me of the pallor of a corpse. They're large-capped, and a light blue with just a tinge of pale grey. There was a time when we'd see them often in the fall. But we haven't come across them in years, and now suddenly, there they are. They're there because this has been a truly unusual wet spring, summer and fall. And these mushrooms are called Indigo milkcap.

More oyster mushrooms on what is left of a decaying trunk that had fallen from its stump only a few days back, standing alongside the trail. The stump itself has a larger colony of the oyster mushrooms camping out on its thicker stalk, but the more slender trunk of a tree that must have died before it had gained much maturity, also hosted a considerable colony of hard-working fungi diligently feeding off the wood fibre to hasten its decay.

Yesterday we happened to notice the presence in the forest interior of a stack of old spruce cones. They would have been left over from last winter. The squirrels that cached them evidently failed to make use of them all, and over the succeeding months -- spring to summer -- it was obvious that the old cones were in a gradual state of decay.

Those we saw piled not far from the old ones were new, however, fallen only in the past days and weeks, meticulously assembled to provide assurance to the industrious squirrels that have collected them, that they'll have ample forage in store for the winter season yet to come. We've seen such caches previously where every single cone was perfectly lined up one against the other, in an orderly pile; obviously the work of a perfectionist.