Today's stamp: Kantarell (Chanterelle mushrooms)

Har du sett herr Kantarell?...uti i enebacken! Han är glader, han är snäll och är så gul på hatten....

(Translation of Swedish childrens' song: "Have you seen Mr Chanterelle? On the juniperslope!  He is happy, he is kind and so yellow on his hat...)

Today's  mushroom picking results: 13 liters of prime kantarells and 3 liters of trattkantarells. (Sorry for the svenglish, guys!) All found in the vicinity of Barking Dog Plaza!

(Update - translation by LS)

Stamp of the Day: Scandinavian Springflowers

Here are a few Nordic spring flowers that don't occur in USA:

Tussilago or hästhov (yellow, top left, Tussilago farfara): loves to grow in muddy ditches and is the first flower of the spring. The leaves of the plants show up much later.

Blåsippa (blue, top right; Hepatica nobilis), is an anemone (windflower) and we have a relative here in New Jersey that looks very similar. Since the leaves are shaped liked kidneys and livers, this plant was used for diseases in those organs. In the past, there was a strong belief that God had marked all plants with signatures like shapes and colors to indicate what the species was good for. This was called the Doctrine of Signatures, and of course is totally bogus and unscientific.

Vitsippa (white, bottom left; Anemone nemorosa) is also a windflower and covers large areas in the forests in early spring. I love this plant.

Gulsippa (yellow, bottom right; Anemone ranunculoides) often grows with the vitsippa but is more uncommon and can't be found as far north as vitsippas in Sweden. All of these flowers occur at Barking Dog Plaza in Sweden, and I really miss them here in USA. When you see these, you really know it is spring and not winter.

Stamp of the Day: Geology

Stamp of the Day today is from Åland, that little island between Finland and Sweden that has some independence but not complete. Featured theme is geology, for two reasons - I feel like a slick stone in this hot and humid weather on the east coast of USA (just horrible), and I am on my way tomorrow to a very geologically interesting area - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA. Geysers, hot springs, volcanic eruptions every 600 00 (=now) years, petrified forests and so on. More reports on Yellowstone later. On the stamps are features left from the ice age - large boulders moved by the ice, 'jättegrytor" (= giant's pots), and pillars shaped by melting glacier water. It is nice to see stamps of natural features that are real and not just pretty (as opposed to butterflies and animated movie stars).