kindling

All photos Hillside Beach, MB. July 13, 2011.

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So I investigated the piles of kindling around the cabin we're staying at, knowing that mushrooms love decaying wood best of all, and found this clump near the old outhouse.

I like it when mushrooms go mouldery green. It's very satisfying, just as taking a hammer to ferns is ALSO very satisfying.

(Did I mention that our afternoon craft was creating what the cabin craft book we bought calls 'fern smash t-shirts,' where you lay fresh fern fronds on a white t-shirt, cover them with paper towels, and smash the shit out of them with a hammer? The chlorophyll in the ferns - or any greenery, really - dyes the shirt, the paper towels and possibly also the hammer head.

Though it sounds unnecessarily violent, the result is uncanny. Like a grainy goddamn photocopy of a fern. It's the fern equivalent of a spore print or, I suppose, a macro photograph.

Now I want to smash ferns endlessly. But worry, somewhat, what that says about me...)