Ozymandias

We woke to a strong, cold southwesterly bringing us biting drops of rain so, to avoid it, we took to the woods for our morning walk, finding almost all the leaves now off the deciduous trees except the beech. This annual and, this year, rather sudden leaf fall effectively hides the fungi but we did find this....

....rather fine specimen, all by itself under a protecting exposed root. The flaky cap, its size,....

....the pinkish stem and the shape of the 'skirt' - the collar on the stem - suggest that it's a shaggy parasol.

As the leaf-fall covers some things, others it exposes, so the memorial to Harriet Sutherland, 1806 - 1868, normally almost invisible, is one of the winners. Poor woman, she stares out stoically at the forestry that encloses her small clearing; few visit her in her remote corner of the woods; her memorial is deteriorating, various knobs and small spires falling off it. Her main achievements seem to have been to produce eleven children for the second Duke of Sutherland, her first cousin, and to have been a friend of Queen Victoria.

Whenever I see a memorial such as this I recite Shelley's poem, Ozymandias.