Monthly Archives: October 2025

fungi

Turkey tails and honey mushrooms

It’s just the right time of the year for a walk in the woods. But be warned — do not eat anything I have tried to identify!

Just enjoy the cool, moist air, heavy with the scent of fruiting fungi.

Dead roots are blossoming.

These are probably Honey mushrooms (Armillaria ostoyae) sprouting through the sward from the rotting roots beneath.

And these may be Common stump brittlestems

These are fly agaric which are magnificent this year

Birch polypore are popping up on all the dead birch trees in the wood where the oaks have stolen the light.

In the meadow fairy rings have appeared, above are earthy powdercaps (Cystoderma amienthinium)

Mica caps (Coprinellus micacaeus) under the oak trees
Orange peel fungus (Aleuria aurantia)
Blusher (Amanita rubescens)
Here’s a blusher that has developed and spread — that is the problem — some are so transient and the appearance changes from day to day.
What these were, I will never know.
These are turkey tails — that is obvious.
Rusty porecrust on another dead birch tree.
More pretty honey mushrooms.

Amazing what you can find on a walk in the woods.

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Art, Scotland, Travel

Glasgow Street Art

We’ve been taking a closer look at Glasgow street art, from subtle graffiti, that pops up the more you look, like Venemouse’s pussies on junction boxes and shelters.

To the fluid free expression on the free wall by the embankment of the River Clyde which changes day by day, hour by hour. Artists adding their work with great respect for the skill and the importance of the message — the work, peer-reviewed to be best, being left the longest before being overpainted.

Like this, above, by Gordie Livingston.

Below is Grace, our guide to the city showing us the World’s Most Economical Taxi by Rogue One containing the artist’s self portrait as the driver and commissioned by the owner of the wall, a tribute to her husband, a cabby.

Larger works in the city are sponsored by business, local government or arts organisations, representing aspects of the city.

Glaswegians are very proud of Billy Connolly.

Here he is in youth on the left, after a painting by Jack Vettriano, in a massive mural by Rogue One and Artpistol. On the right, he is seen in later life.

Murals project the image of the university

And the community

This is the Keeper of the Light by Smug a huge photo-realistic representation of the diversity of 2025 Glasgow which reminded me of something we had seen the day before in the Burrell Art Gallery, Glasgow.

A statue of Guanyin (1100-1200), a Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy with androgenous face and body, looking neither male nor female, celebrated as a Trans icon.

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