Lynlee Fawn

💔♥️💜Please read: Posting for a dear, unimaginably brokenhearted, precious friend. Please scroll through. It’s a hard one to read, but please try to, and then if you’re able, see the link in her bio @shayna_lyn ♥️ for (greatly needed!) donation details. https://gofund.me/7e1ec3b0 There was no way I could post of my morning picking these edible flowers without making it about Violet💜. Every one I picked made me pause and send extra love to Shayna. My heart breaks for my friend and all who loved (love) her child. 💔 If you can’t help monetarily, please send healing loves, healing prayers, any healing thoughts, all good things her and her family’s way. Thank you.♥️ (Also in the basket are edible hosta shoots and Norway maple blossoms. The last video is one of about a dozen frogs I saw and/or heard out back. @shayna loves nature, and I hope this brings even the very smallest amount of joy to her broken spirit. I love you, Shayna.♥️)

Some of my artworks over the past few years and some from the very early 2000s. Just a very small glimpse of what goes on in my ✨♥️✨🧠✨🩸✨. cLFT cLynleeFawn

No need to make popcorn, only a one minute show. 59 seconds, actually. 🎨📷🍄🐿🌼🐦🌿 X-rays and MRIs cLynleeFawn2022 cLFT2022 All artwork and photos by me, aside from the radiology images. (👣 are @leah_mycelia ‘s, hands and 🧠 are mine.) #mushroomsoftheredwoodcoast #fungi #mushrooms #mycology #mycophiles #slimemold #slimemould #bones #xrays #mris #optoutsideifyoucan

A very refreshing mocktail that I made today with the following foraged plants: • mulberries (crushed) • mint (chopped tiny then crushed with the berries) • wild rose (made into syrup) Mixed with fizzy water and a squeeze of lime. Over ice. A rum free Mulberry Mojito, I suppose. Delicious! #mocktail #midwestforaging #midwestforager

A mini dinosaur! I saw this big, flat, very long-necked Spiny Softshell turtle (Apalone spinifera) in our backyard this afternoon! She was incredibly fast getting back to the water after seeing me. She must have laid her eggs somewhere on a sandbank. I read that softshell turtles lay their eggs in direct sunlight, not buried in a hole. Interesting. Easy snacks for other wildlife! The similar Smooth Softshell turtle (Apalone mutica) isn’t found in this county and is a threatened species here in IL. The Spiny Softshell is common. Just sharing some things I read today. Exciting! 😍 #spinysoftshellturtle #apalonespinifera #illinoisturtles #turtlesofillinois

Okay, there’s now a Part III, because I just got back inside from feeding the frog again and watched it in slo-mo! Shown in the second half of this very short video. Frogs are so quick— look how many moves take place in just a few seconds of maneuvering this worm to slurp down! #froglover #thingsidoformymentalhealth #optoutsideifyoucan 💚🐸🪱

Part II of Feeding the Frog. First video shows a successful throw. I split a bigger worm in half before tossing it. Second video? Full worm. 🐸💭 Nice throw, Lady. Try again, please.

Part I. There exists a long list of very important things to do today. Enough to run out of sticky notes. An incredibly long list. How much time did I spend collecting slugs and worms from under rocks and stumps to feed my frog friend in the creek this afternoon? I don’t even know, but the cutie got full enough to watch the last two worms get away. Now to make a sticky note reminding me to feed the frog then cross it off and throw it out. ✅🐸🪱

Wild Rose Cake with Candied Angelica I would’ve loved to call this— Candied Angelica Cake with Wild Rose — but I only had a small amount of the precious candy left, so this obnoxious rose gets dibs (has rose syrup and dried petals). It’s more like a pound cake-shortbread. A thick batter but not as thick as shortbread dough. The crunchy edge is my favorite. Yum! I really like how this idea turned out. Just wishing I’d have had enough Angelica to put a nice piece on top with the flowers. Scroll if you’d like to see more. One and a half sticks of butter went into this, so I didn’t rehydrate the dried rose petals (same bushes, from last year) before mixing them in. Plenty of moisture in there. After baking and removing the cake from the pan, I poked little holes in it, let it cool, then poured rose petal syrup over it, syrup I made last week with fresh petals (see photos and video). No need for the powdered sugar; it just looks pretty! A very sweet treat. The collage at the end shows part of a post from last year when I candied the Angelica atropurpurea stems that Octavian and I foraged here in Illinois. Continued gratitude to @foragerchef Alan Bergo for his detailed explanation on how to candy the stems of this amazing plant! See his blog/site— /candied-angelica/#recipe Anyway, if you’re not a big rose flavor fan, I’m not either, unless it’s fairly mild (but I do enjoy ma’amoul, Lebanese cookies with rose water. Thinking extra of you, @somerabboud 💞!). I find the flavor of Rosa multiflora not to be nearly as strong as the aroma of the flowers. The syrup is mildly rosy, and I used a lot of petals! This invasive, nonnative, wild rose will reach out its arms and grab hold of you, and the more you try to get away, the more stuck you’ll get. So, I advise using scissors and letting your cuttings fall into your basket. I nicely curse 🤣 these bushes all the while telling them how wonderful they smell, and I enjoy watching various pollinators visit (see the one 🌸🐝 video). #rosamultiflora #wildrosepetalsyrup #wildrosecake #candiedangelicastems #angelicaatropurpurea #angelicacake #midwestforaging

Yummy Mushroom Clear Soup with Mitsuba is what I’m calling it. Fungi used: • Crown-tipped Coral (minus the spider shown) and Wood Ear, both picked fresh out back just before making this soup. • Dried Shiitake mushrooms so generously gifted to us by @welcome_to_mushroom_hour and @goddessshakti when we visited them in CA a few years ago, shown dried then rehydrated. (❤️Thank you guys again and for sharing your blocks from @farwestfungi ! We got a few fruitings from them when living on the OR Coast.) Other ingredients: • Mitsuba (honewort, wild chervil) that I picked by the creek behind our house! Added near the end and garnished with more. See last two photos, the last being a screenshot of my recent post about this Japanese Parsley, has a hint of cilantro flavor. Thank you again, Tim @mnforager , for giving me ID confirmation! And I am so thankful to Samuel Thayer for sharing such thorough information in his incredible book (see last photo)! • vegetable stock • liquid from the rehydrated Shiitake • garlic • dried Ramp/Wild Leek leaves (had no green onion) • soy sauce • rice vinegar (little bit) • sesame oil (a little at the end) • shaved carrots added near the end to keep color and little crunch • grated dried ginger • that’s probably all 🤔 #crowntippedcoral #artomycespyxidatus #woodearmushroom #shiitake #japaneseparsley #mitsuba #honewort #wildchervil #cryptotaeniacanadensis #midwestforaging

♥️Thank you for this beautiful and deeply special book, Sissy @weirdgirlbutnice ! I love it. You knew I would. Today, it was the stinging nettle story. Reminded me of finding the juvenile Wapiti/Elk shed, gifted to me right there, when showing you one of our most favorite chanterelle spots on the Oregon Coast. 💚These nettles are ones I picked a couple of days ago here in northern IL. Scroll for individual shots, and if curious, check out this gorgeous, informative, interesting book, with some life stories included, by — Enrique Salmón @iwigara 🌿 The Kinship of Plants and People 🌱American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science 📖. #indigenousfoodsovereignty #iwígara #ethnobotany #stingingnettle #urticadioica

A great day. I went out back for about an hour to forage, talk with frogs, birds, damselflies, and also look for snakes and Painted Turtles (saw neither of those two), but see my previous post! Plus, the Crown-tipped Coral keeps fruiting so abundantly! I lucked out finding bigger grape leaves to put on top of the Curly Dock leaves and under the coral mushroom pieces, because this gorgeous fungus can be very messy (see photo). Most of the dock plants are going to seed, but I found a decent amount of younger plants with softer leaves and tasted a few to check for bitterness— tasted good to me! I’ll make another Aveluk braid (small one). Cleaning and sorting all of these later. For now, I’m going to chill out and just be thankful. Thankful I can often go on these little nature treks. Slow, but I go. And thankful to have medical care. It’s World MS Day (see my stories), and I can’t help but think of all on this planet with Multiple Sclerosis not getting the care they need. 💔🧡🎗️🌏🌍🌎 #worldmsday2024 #curemultiplesclerosis #mswarriors #midwestforaging #foragedfood #disabledforager #disabledforagers