OCTOBER MUSINGS

Seasonal stories and notable happenings from the team behind Ochre Botanical Studios.

Thank you for joining us here!

Hello! I’m so glad it’s my turn to write the mailout, in this wonderful month of October. It’s a month when the season’s shift feels sharpest for me. The last of the flowers have been cut, the layers of clothing are getting thicker and thicker and thoughts turn to winding down a little before the winter festivities take hold.

With the summer rush of weddings, I often find myself caught up in a frenetic ‘go-go-go’ mindset, trying to squeeze out every last ray of the day’s sunshine knowing that come November I’ll be convincing myself that spring is just around the corner for the next four months. But for now, it’s October; it’s peak autumn. The pace is slowing, the moon feels brighter and everything is encapsulated in shades of gold, bronze and rust, all soundtracked by rustling trees and crunchy leaves underfoot.

Following on from Marion’s musings about finding tranquillity in walking, snips in hand and from Sophie’s exploration of the beauty in edible floristry, I’d like to talk about something that for me meaningfully combines these two topics, a subject that wholeheartedly encapsulates autumn for me. For this month, I’d like to invite you to join me in my mushroom musings.

Foraging for mushrooms has been something that has enthralled me for the past few years, ever since I laid my eyes on some nuggets of gold, gleaming amongst the oak trees and learned that they were chanterelles. After messaging three different friends, carefully thumbing my foraging book and doing plenty of online research, I mustered up the courage to fry them up with some garlic and tentatively nibble them with some toast. Finding food from nature’s larder is very satisfying indeed.

And yet, these days I find that my fascination with fungi isn’t necessarily all that driven by finding something tasty to eat for dinner, but rather it lies in the entire process of a foraging foray. Everything slows down when treading carefully, becoming conscious of one’s surroundings and enjoying the art of noticing – something which resonates with our work.

Identifying a new mushroom requires me to be inquisitive. Peering, sniffing, touching, breaking open, tasting (and spitting out) makes the experience truly holistic. I especially love that foraging mushrooms gives me the opportunity to show appreciation of their form. You can find varieties that are twirly or stout, chunky or spindly, slimy or spikey. Likewise in flower arranging, noticing the shape, scent or shade allows us to pause and appreciate.

You may already know that the mushroom is only the fruiting body of a much wider mycelial network, sometimes referred to as the ‘wood wide web’. Through this, trees are able to share nutrients with each other, thus fungi create a symbiotic relationship with other organisms in the forest, revealing thriving underground cities beneath our feet. In my last email, I talked about how we have been lucky to create meaningful connections, with each other and with new friends from our community. This network is a hugely valued aspect of our work. Scottish naturalist John Muir said ‘when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe’.