What a difference a ten days make.

The day after I drove back to the Czech Republic from England I did what I always do on my return and went for a walk in the forest above the house. I went of course with mushroom basket in hand. I returned with it full of giant chanterelles - as you can see from the picture above. I had two meals of these treasures and froze enough for probably six more. I duly made a mental note to go back this week.

So it was that a Czech friend and I arrived in the forest this afternoon, but despite nearly two hours walking we found only small and sometimes dessicated mushrooms. This seems just weird to me as we have had several days' worth of rain in the village in the intervening time. Maybe our weird microclimate meant that the forest above us did not receive any rain. Mind you I'm not complaining I still have enough for a couple of meals and there's only limited space in the freezer compartment (which is full of wild strawberries, cherries and now chanterelles).

One point of note is that this wet and for the Czechs mild summer has had an interesting impact. The Prague News is announcing that as a consequence the famous bark beetle is dying off. It seems the environmentalists were right - nature is taking its course and intervening to restore balance and the Sumava authorities' drastic logging actions may not have been necessary afterall.