Beech, rain, mushrooms?
In just a couple of wet weeks, the garden has reached jungle proportions... everything is so.... green! The ground squelches most satisfyingly underfoot... Hooray for a bit of wet!

But a week after our return from France, I suddenly noticed the beech trees on my way to work had come into leaf. Delicious silky green foliage- a classic spring moment for me is standing under the canopy of delicate new leaves (ideally in the sunshine for best light effects) munching, basking and foraging: as in: 'one in the bag, one in the mouth, one for the pot, one for me...' lol

Beech leaves have such a short season - they're only edible while soft, and so far, I've only managed to do a couple of things with them... one is beech leaf noyau, a liqueur type of drink and the other - a sandwich made with good bread, a generous slathering of butter, packed with shredded beech leaves and seasoned lightly with salt and pepper. The arterially challenged may prefer olive oil to butter - it tastes just as good!
Mushooms have been dismal so far this year, but I have a good 'shroom feeling in my bones - all this rain plus a bit of sun: we should soon be seeing morels, (see the pic above) fairy ring champignons and St Georges around these parts...