The week before last Jeff and Bracken headed up in the woods by our house to look for a Christmas tree and they came across something they weren’t expecting to see so late in the year… chantrelles! They got about half a dozen huge ones that were still good. (Lucky timing because a few days later the frost would have got them.) The chantrelles were only a short walk from our front door, in a part of the forest we hadn’t visited in awhile. (The mushroom pictured above was pulled up in the excitement, but after that they were harvested with a knife to disturb the mycelium underground as little as possible for more mushrooms to grow in that area.) Jeff sauteed all the chantrelles they had harvested with our dinner that night and they were delicious.

Last week we harvested one lemon from our little lemon tree (currently living on our front porch for the winter) and this week we harvested three. We harvested lemons last December, so this wasn’t an entirely new experience to us, but I’m still completely amazed to be plucking a bright yellow fruit off a tree when it’s so cold outside and the garden has long been put to bed for the year. The smell of lemons fills my senses with a feeling of bright sunshine and to have a juicy, citrus treat right out our front door this time of year is such a blessing.

Since I had forgotten about the lemons (I sometimes do when they take so long to ripen), they were a surprise when we walked in the front door and suddenly noticed they looked yellow and ready to harvest. We all agreed the chantrelles and lemons were wonderful December surprises!