When we came back home from the wild garlic hunt the other day, I showed my photos to my brother, and he knew immediately where we went wrong. We just took a wrong turn and went right from the parking slot instead of left. This just gave us a reason to go back and try again. My brother suggested to go with us, and we happily agreed as we didn't want to get lost in the forest. And it's always good to have two more hands for foraging as it goes much faster.
And look, we were successful this time! It wasn't easy because there was not as much wild garlic as we hoped for, but we had a good walk and foraged as much as we needed. It smelled so delicious!
I cannot really say that the path was more complicated this time as there was no path at all. We were going through bushes, moving their branches to sides and trying not to let them hit the other person walking behind.
Apparently, the water level is moving every now and then which changes the landscape, so we had to carefully navigate through the area not to get lost. We had to walk to the other side of the lake. Well, I don't even know if it's a lake if it's created by beavers building their dams. They could even cause a flood, but luckily there are no houses in this area.
On the other side of the water is a hill which was covered in tiny white pinwheels. We walked a bit higher because there were wet spots closer to water. My brother didn't have the right shoes as he came from his place only for a couple of days and didn't expect to go to the forest, and we didn't want him to get wet.
Those little flowers were everywhere and it was impossible not to walk over them especially when we had to pay attention to the branches as well. Oh, and before I forget, there were plants with thorns on the ground too. I accidentally got stung by one and it hurt for the rest of the day, so I guess it was something a bit poisonous.
When I was a child, cowslips were a typical spring flower blooming on all fields and in all forests. There were plenty of them. Today, it's rather rare to spot one, especially such big and healthy one.
On the other hand, this one didn't grow in our area when I was a child. It should be called a farmer's slob if I'm not mistaken. There were also plenty of them.
Slowly, we were approaching the spot where we should find the wild garlic, so we had come closer to water again. This is when we realized that it is a home to beavers. There were many trees carved out and the swamp wasn't there in the past. We stayed quiet for a while in hope that we would see a beaver, but we were not successful.
This is where they built their dam. There are plenty of branches neatly sorted and placed on the water.
Sometimes, I feel like having such level of state protection in the forest is not always right. There were so many old trees that could be removed, but it is forbidden to clean the forest as it's a national park. It is just left to grow wild.
But the beavers can do whatever they want to, even cause a flood 🙂
We had to walk under a collapsed tree that is rotting.
We were getting out of the forest and approaching large fields. This is where we should find what we were looking for!
The combination of old and new: old leaves from last year with plenty of spring flowers and lush grass.
Let us walk a bit further...
It was getting more neat and clean. I could even recognize a small path, so finally didn't have to watch my each step not to step on the flowers.
We were now a bit over the lake, and here you can see the small creek that was blocked by the beavers and created the lake.
And this is the place where we started collecting. As I said, there was not too much of wild garlic and it's difficult to see on the photos.
It's a pity that those are not edible. I always enjoy some mushrooms on my plate 🙂 We were ready with collecting and it was time to walk back to the car.
I thought it would be easier on the way back but I was wrong. It was as difficult as it was before.
I was still hoping to see a beaver when we heard some noises coming from the ground.
And then we found their home! It was quite a big hole hidden under a rotting trunk. I didn't want to come closer as they can get aggressive when disturbed but my husband swore that he say eyes in the hole 🙂
We were so excited we found their home, so we stayed to explore it a bit more. We started to look for signs that the beavers left.
We might have disturbed them at work as this was still fresh.
It must have taken a lot of work to do this.
They 'attack' any tree they find on their way.
Here they got greedy and wanted to use the whole tree but didn't manage to work through it.
You can see that the road is only a few meters away from this spot. Either they are not scared at all or there really are only a couple of cars passing here each day, so they have nothing to worry about.
I made a mistake to take the wild garlic in the car as its scent is very strong and we had about 30 minutes drive back home 🙂 Lesson learned - next year put it in the trunk.
See you next time!