sticky buns and birch bolettes.

Foraged mushrooms are finally on the menu.

For too long now I have wanted some help with identifying mushrooms but it's information that is hard to come by. Generally for the average Kiwi, if the mushroom doesn't look like a field mushroom you steer clear.

The impetus to move forward came from Gunter coming home after spending a week walking in a forest full of "stick buns:" mushrooms I wouldn't have recognised but he did from his younger years in Germany.

He gave me the confidence I needed to investigate further.

I love starting out on a new learning path when all of a sudden large parts of the world become new again and our scope widens in breadth.

I'm suddenly seeing fungi everywhere.

Sky's drawing up mushroom posters.

Gunter is planning the feast.

We are walking along routes we haven't for a while just to check out he mushroom possibilities.

This morning Gunter and I pulled the girls down the road in their pj's to see some birch boletes I had seen on my early morning walk. The excitement was palpable.

It felt good to know what they were and to name them.

It felt good to know that they are edible.

It felt good to be sharing with my co-learners: holding hands when needing confidence, sharing the excitement of the discoveries, spurring on the enquiry with new questions and fresh directions.