Sweet Baby Shower

One of my book club sisters is going to be a grandma for the second time. Last Saturday she threw a beautiful shower for her daughter.

Michelle, The Roving Gourmet, dropped off the food before the guests arrived. The menu was perfect:: cold celery soup shooters, spinach salad, poached salmon, chicken salad, fruit salad. All delicious! 

We ate outside in the back yard.  

After lunch we were invited to decorate onesies and shirts with fabric paints.

Several guest thought that the baby would be stepping into Daddy's car-mechanic footsteps.

Then came the gifts, and there were many.  The time moved swiftly because we played Baby Bingo with cards listing possible baby gifts. With every gift someone may ask "There wouldn't be a hooter-hider in that diaper bag, would there?" or "Could that be used as a pee-pee teepee?". You wouldn't believe the cheers when a night light was finally unwrapped. 

The baby will be well dressed for the World-Series-Winning San Francisco Giants ballgames.

There will be no shortage of onesies and shirts.



Baby will even have one with his Facebook page.

The afternoon ended on a sweet note.

The tiny bundt cakes were from a place called Bundtini. Super yummy!

Next time I will share with you what I brought to the shower. 

A Walk in the Forest on Whidbey Island

Back in April I visited my college friend David and his wife Victoria. They live on Whidbey Island, a quick ferry ride north of Seattle. One afternoon during our magical weekend, we took a brief hike in the forest...

...where the air is moist and the moss grows lush.

The undergrowth is a study in organic design.



We had to watch that we didn't step on anyone...

Banana slug (Genus Ariolimax)

...and that no one might step on us.

I had never seen so many varieties of fungi in less than an hour. 

Update: possibly Bulgaria inquinans

I could not identify one of them...

... beyond the kingdom of Fungi.

Then I saw a mushroom similar to one that my buddy Ken-ichi identified for me last January. Hopefully Ken-ichi, impressive naturalist and co-founder/developer of iNaturalist.org, will confirm that this is of the genus Agaricus.

I recognized the morel mushroom from back in the days when I could eat mushrooms without getting a migraine headache.

Morel mushroom (Genus Morchella)

I have never eaten a salmonberry, but I bet it's delicious.

Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) 

Maybe I have to return in the autumn so that I could taste them.