Frost, Fungi, and Fun

A hard frost made everything sparkle this morning, but after several failed attempts to capture the delicate patterns on various plants in our front garden, I gave up, knowing I could count on getting a Saturday blip at the Bellingham Farmers Market.

These delicious, beautiful fungi are from Cascadia Mushrooms, a local business selling a diverse range of mushrooms, as well as grow-your-own-mushroom kits for indoor use, mushroom spawn for outdoor mushroom beds, and shiitake mushroom plugs for growing mushrooms in hardwood logs and stumps.

(If fungi aren't your thing, here are a few more more gustatory, olfactory, and visual delights from today's market.)

And the fun? As dusk fell, P and I went to Mount Bakery for an early supper -- duck pot pie and spinach salad for him, while I chose shiitake mushrooms (no doubt from Cascadia) and chevre on slices of toasted and buttered baguette.

After supper we enjoyed an outstanding concert by the Whatcom Symphony in the beautiful Mount Baker Theatre. I've never heard Smetana's The Moldau played better, and I also loved And God Created Great Whales by Alan Hovhaness. Works by Charles Ives, Camille Saint Saens, and Edvard Grieg rounded out the program.

A very pleasurable day!