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not a great chanterelle season
Tuesday, July 21 2026
This morning I took a recreational 120mg dose of pseudoephedrine, which hasn't seemed to be causing me much heart arrhythmia lately. Today, though, I noticed occasional skipped heart beats while at rest under its influence, something I rarely experience. The skipped beats seemed isolated, not being part of a pattern of every nth-beat being skipped, as has happened in patterns that I've come to associate with pseudoephedrine withdrawal.
The plan for early today was for our neighbor A and her boyfriend Jamie to come over and go for a walk in the forest. But in her text exchange with Gretchen, A said that they were trying to get a plumber to look at their boiler because it had stop producing hot water. I immediately volunteered to go over and look at it myself. It was raining at the time, so I drove there in the Chevy Bolt. A greeted me and showed me to the basement, and it was soon clear that the boiler itself was off, though it wasn't clear why. Electricity was making it to some parts but not to others. I started removing covered from components so I could test for voltages with a multimeter I was very happy to have brought with me.
Shortly after I started doing these things, some guy from JSP (a big local HVAC contractor) showed up, but he was only there to write up an estimate for a conversion from an oil-burning boiler with indirect hot water heating to a gas-powered on-demand system. (The estimate would be $20,000.) Meanwhile, I discovered that power for the boiler was not making it out of a little box where both a green and red LED were on. Looking carefully at these boxes and the hard-to-read LED labels stamped into the sheet metal of their housing, I saw that the red LED was labeled with words to the effect that it would be shining if water was too low. Back in the spring, I'd shut off water flowing from the potable system into the hydronic system for fear it might start coming out of the pipes where I'd removed a radiator in the upstairs bathroom, a radiator I'd yet to fix and put back. I tried running some water back into the system, but I was nervous it might start pouring into the upstairs bathroom, so I borrowed A's phone to stay in touch with Jamie up in the bathroom as I ran more water into the hydronic system down in the basement. I let the water run until the hissing stopped, and water never appeared at Jamie's end, meaning that I had successfully isolated that part of the hydronic system way back in the spring and could've just left the water feeder valve from the potable system open. Once the system was refilled, the low-water red LED on the water detector device switched off and the boiler switched on. I told Jamie this and he told me there was a whole pot (he meant "french press") of coffee waiting for me upstairs. I was a hero, though of course my tinkering in the basement back in the spring had lit the long fuse for the problem I'd just corrected.
A, Jamie, and I stood around in the kitchen talking about Jamie's having just moved in with all his stuff from Brooklyn, among other things. Conversation then moved on to things related to the burden and expense of owning a house, and in so doing, A casually mentioned that the house actually has two functional wells that can be switched between and that she occasionally takes advantage of this. "That's amazing! Backup systems are great! I love stuff like that!" I said, adding, "Our house has many things like this. But we don't have two wells."
Eventually the conversation turned to two outbuildings, one being a garage A calls "the barn," and the other being something of a two-room tiny house with no bathroom that the adult son of the former owners had used as an architecture studio as recently as only a few years ago. A was dismissive of these, acting as if they were too much work to deal with. She particularly wrote off the old architecture studio for having as a foundation "a pile of rubble." I said I wanted to look at them, so before heading home, Jame gave me a tour of both. The barn turned out to be in much better shape than I'd been led to believe. It had a perfectly solid roof that showed no signs of leaks, and, despite all the talk of carpenter bee damage, the clapboards outside seemed sound and just needed some paint. There was a little water damage in one place where a gutter needed a downspout, and the electricial system was unreliable, but that was the extent of the problem. As for the old architecture studio, it seemed similarly solid, with only superficial problems, though, with its single-pane windows and dubious insulation, it woudn't be an easy space to keep warm in the winter. It even had an 8 kilowatt Generac generator outside connected to a 250 gallon propane tank. That probably only needed a 12v battery to get it working again.
While we were looking at the propane tank, A's former husband J arrived in a massive pickup truck with their daughter, who needed to get something. When I suggested painting the propane tank to make it look like a submarine, she thought it should probably be a yellow one. She also correctly identified a few sprigs of poison ivy we were standing on.
Not long after I returned home, A and Jamie arrived with A's little dog Henry, and the four of us humans and all the dogs but Neville went for a walk in the forest. We headed up the Farm Road, passing a new shed near its south end erected by the families who recently purchased a 75 acre tract back there. Beyond that, we headed out on a trail that I never take by myself southwest of the abandoned go-cart track. Gretchen was eager to talk to A about the march to end animal testing she's been organizing, perhaps hoping to tap into A's celebrity-rich social network. Meanwhile Jamie and I fell behind as I turned into something of an ad hoc nature guide, showing him the difference between sedges (which had turned the forest floor into something resembling an overgrown golf course) and grasses such as Japanese stilt grass (which had done the same in other areas). At some point we found a few chanterelles, and I was reminded that mid-to-late July is chanterelle season. I then pointed out the difference between a true gill (like what is found under the cap of a white Russula I found) and the false gills on a chanterelle.
I was so unfamiliar with the trail we were on that I found myself deeply disoriented when I saw buildings appearing in the distance that looked like they belonged to the farm at the end of the Farm Road when I thought at the time we were closer to the abandoned bluestone mine. (It was a cloudy day, so I hadn't noticed we'd just walked in a loop.) By then we'd completely lost A, Gretchen, and the dogs. So I took Jamie on a detour to look for more chanterelles at a patch I've been visiting for years a little ways up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail. But I only found a few up there. Evidently something about this year (perhaps it was that heat wave or the associated drought) had caused subterranean chanterelle organisms to be much less productive than normal.
Back at the house, Gretchen was just leaving for pilates and A and Henry had headed home, so Jamie did the same. I went into the house and ate my second avocado sandwich for the day. Given the number of avocados in the house, it will be hard to justify having many meals that do not include it.
We'd managed to get that walk in between rain showers, which returned later this afternoon alongside hysterical warnings on NextDoor about tornadoes. The rain fell heavy at times and there was some thunder and lightning, but never all that much wind.
This evening, Gretchen and I drove out to La Florentina to meet up with our friends Ryan and Colleen, the ones who own a vegan bakery & café in New Paltz. Colleen had been our house sitter while we were on our recent cruise, so we were feeling in her debt. Fortunately, she'd enjoyed staying in our house, which had allowed her and Ryan some space to disppear into, something even the closest couples require. Naturally, we ordered the sformato with tahini sauce (aka "purple pie"), though we also ordered two of the puffy steam-filled breads, a salad, and even a plate of hummus. Since Colleen and Ryan are sober and Gretchen rarely drinks, I was the only one at the table with a glass of Montepulchiano.
Our dinner conversation ranged widely, with Colleen giving us detailed insights about our four animals and how our attitude towards parenting them differs from the mainstream. We love them a great deal, but we also give them agency, enough to get them into trouble on occasion. Lester the Cat can be bribed with food and is very outgoing but not much of a snuggler. (Ryan sent us video of him joining them on a walk in the forest, something he has never done with either of us, though Diane has done it with me.) Diane cannot be bribed with food, and she is a huge snuggler after a few days of reluctance. Neville was skeptical of Colleen at first, but after much bribing with peanut butter crackers, he decided she was okay. Charlotte loved both Ryan and Colleen from the start, but was more skeptical of Ryan after she rolled in something disgusting and they made her take a bath (which reminded me of Charlotte's periodically-refreshed skepticism of me every time I am forced by circumstances to make her do something unpleasant).
Other topics discussed included Gretchen's well-meaning directness, which sees her occasionally making pointed critiques of various products of Ryan & Colleen's café. Colleen even had a story from a time when she recognized Gretchen but Gretchen was unaware that Colleen was present. This was at some sort of vegan food festival, and Gretchen had just tried a baked good produced by some other vegan bakery. Colleen reported that Gretchen took one bite and immediately complained that it didn't seem fresh. Some time later, Colleen got a scoop from one of the employees of that bakery that their baked goods are all made on one specific day of the week and then frozen, which, any baker will tell you, is no substitute for genuine freshness.
The conversation also lingered for a long time on Gretchen's activism, with Ryan saying she was made for it. If anyone needs proof, just look at how big her march to end animal testing has become in just a couple months.
When the check came, Gretchen and I insisted on paying of course.
Before we left La Florentina, we happened to notice that Ryan and Colleen had come in a Ford F-150 Lightning, the all-electric pickup truck that Ford had decided to discontinue due to problems convincing the truck-buying demographic that electric is the way to go (something that would probably be easier now that gasoline is over $4/gallon). Ryan showed us the frunk, which is probably the most jarring change from conventional pickup design. They also told us about some Central Hudson program whereby drivers of electric vehicles can save money charging them by doing it off peak hours. I'd heard of such programs in other places but didn't know it is available in New York and made a note to research that later.
Back at the house, I made myself a boozy beverage and proceeded to watch the first three episodes of the third season of House of the Dragon, which I had recently downloaded. It's been awhile since I'd been in that cinematic universe, so I'd forgotten some of the relationships between people and houses and what the state the alliances had been left in at the end of season two. The first two episodes were full of chaotic, gruesome war scenes, with lots of blood and hand-to-hand combat, and I had trouble following what was going on given all that I'd forgotten about who was allied with whom. But the third episode was back to the kind of pacing I liked, with less violence and more intrigue. I was also loving the portrayal of Helaena Targaryen, who is clearly far out on the autism spectrum. In what other fantasy/medieval show is anyone ever portrayed as neurodivergent?
I experienced a jump scare when Jamie and I came upon this in the forest southwest of the farm at the end of the Farm Road today. Click to enlarge.
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