On Saturday night, we went to a surprise birthday party for Greg who turned 50. And boy, was he ever surprised! My friend Holly made him a special birthday hat.
He and his partner Bonnie sang a bit and laughed a lot.
I made the cake...with help from a bottle of Labatt 50 beer.
And I also helped serve the cake. What fun!
Yesterday's breakfast. Yogurt and a handful of golden raspberries picked moments before. Golden raspberries (and I don't mean the awards given to truly awful films) produce fruit mid-summer and then again in the fall. They are very sweet and I suspect almost too delicate to sell successfully in a grocery store. If you have room in your garden, plant a few canes. Just when everything else is in the garden is on its way out, these guys start producing fruit like mad.
I had friends visiting from New Zealand over for lunch yesterday so I put together a light lunch. A selection of cheeses...
...a warm, olive miche...
...curried deviled eggs plus a salad made up from the garden: the last tomatoes, cucumbers and pepper with basil leaves.
I also made a charred, marinated eggplant dish. I oiled and grilled both sides of the unpeeled eggplant slices. Then I poured over them some maple-balsamic vinegar and olive oil, topped with a little salt and pepper. Turned out great. 
My friend Susan is growing Shitake mushrooms on logs in her basement.
She has four logs hanging from the ceiling and in five days, she gets mature, edible mushrooms.
She gave me a few to take home.
I cooked chicken breasts in white wine, soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, fresh ginger root and shitake mushrooms. Very yummy.
This autumn, the strangest things have been popping out of the lawn. Something I'd never seen before.
I thought this was a cool mushroom and NO, I did NOT eat it...
...but instead spore-printed it to try to identify it.
I am thinking it is a Slippery Jill (Suillus salmonicolor, also known as Suillus subluteus) from the Bolete family. My books say it's edible but I bet it tastes pretty yucky. It was slimy and left a stain on my fingers. No way was I going to try that! Sometime "edible" doesn't necessarily mean "tasty." 
Then I came across a regular fall lawn mushroom: the Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus). You are supposed to pick them as fresh as possible when they look like this...
...and not like this, on day two...
...and especially not like this on day three when it's all black and inky. I don't eat these mushrooms and don't recommend them either. They are edible and yes, I tried them once but wasn't mad for them.
Okay now, this IS edible and was given to me by a friend. When he can find them, he picks at least one large Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa) every year. This weighed 10 pounds when picked and I got half of it.
It kind of looks like it's made up of feathers, sort of like a hen.
To eat it, you pull it apart, like a caulifower or broccoli and clean each part to make sure there's no dirt in each segment...
...and then put them in the dehydrator to use in soup for another day...
...or fry them up in butter for immediate consumption. Very delicious!
Guess what showed up at Richard's on Saturday afternoon? A little black kitten...
...and a little tabby were both curled up in the garden.
It was about to rain so Richard and I scooped them up, put them in the wood shed and fed them. They were really hungry!
We found them a box and tucked them inside.
Oh boy are they cuties. If anyone would like a cat, please e-mail me at: ronna@mogelon.com. We deliver (within reason)!
In the meantime, Richard is doing his best to socialize them. They're really very friendly and sweet.
It's almost October and my garden still hasn't been nipped by frost. There was a light frost on the grass when I woke up on Saturday morning but my garden seems untouched. Oddly enough, my Oregon lupins have decided to bloom a second time. Always nice to see 'em.
The nasturtiums have gone crazy...so crazy that a shoot has grown up inside the little cabin and come through one of the boards to bloom.
My mom planted these golden raspberries many moons ago.
The great thing about them is that they deliver fruit spring and fall.
The poor eggplants didn't have enough heat this summer. This one needs another full month of heat. Guess I'll be eating a miniature eggplant soon.
The tomatoes also suffered from lack of heat. These are volunteers, seeds from the compost pile that grew in the same spot as the planted jalapenos (look at the bottom of the photo).
The peppers have gone mad and are producing full-sized, grocery store-like peppers!
The poor cucumber plants are dying. But look at this determined plant. It's leaves are dying, it's still producing fruit and it's still flowering. Wish we had another month...
My salad for supper last night. I even found a fresh sprig of dill popping up. It's going to frost any day now so every trip to the garden is a treat.
On Saturday, my friend Peggi and I will be participating in a Native Plant Workshop. Peggi will give a talk on native plant identification and I'll be demonstrating how to make soup with morel mushrooms. There will also be a fellow discussing First Nations' use of native plants and herbs as medicine. 
In addition to that, there'll also be a field tour, which will be taken at a Girl Guide camp nearby. So we figured we'd better check it out before the actual walk took place.
There were all sorts of neat things in the woods...this mushroom...
...which, by the way, I WON'T be using in my soup!
There were tons of high bush cranberries, which even the birds won't eat. Who actually eats these I wonder? Yuck!
Peggi pointed out this interesting plant called Vervain. 
Many dragonflies were buzzing about that day.
The great thing about this location is that it has a good path through the woods which ends at the edge of a lake. Here is Peggi digging up some water plant's roots.
One of the nicest things about the walk in the woods was Peggi's homemade peach pie at the end of the day.
Red, orange and yellow roses against milk chocolate buttercream. I thought it a good way to send good wishes my friends who all share September birthdays.
