Heehee-hoohoo (stealthily reaches for my paintbrushes)
I love how color is one of the very important ways of identifying a mushroom, except these guys think it's cute to just
browns? grays? cream? blues? tan? reddish? Hell yeah! Trametes versicolor. (plus two other scientific names, because apparently mushroom phylogeny almost as bad of a dumpster fire as fish phylogeny)
My husband finished the final little tweaks to his walnut table (although he still needs a maker's mark) and had some extra energy left over, so he planed a couple of interesting pieces of wood for me to paint on. One is an odd-shaped piece of walnut that my late father must have cut at his sawmill, and two circular 'tree cookies' that Husband cut from a dead ash tree.
The circle is about 13.5 inches / 34 cm in diameter. I feel like there are so many possibilities for painting this that I can't decide what to start with!
This patch of blue turkeytail fungus would be a challenge . . but so lovely. Much to ponder.
Ok, I would have taken time to ponder, but I was impatient. Turkey tail fungus it is!
I put down a layer of clear, glossy medium, then painted in the darkest areas with raw umber. It is two weeks until the local big Art Sale and Tour. Hmm.
Turkey tail fungus, my beloved. I'm not totally sure how to mix up that lovely gray-blue, but hopefully it won't take too many tries.
My husband finished the final little tweaks to his walnut table (although he still needs a maker's mark) and had some extra energy left over, so he planed a couple of interesting pieces of wood for me to paint on. One is an odd-shaped piece of walnut that my late father must have cut at his sawmill, and two circular 'tree cookies' that Husband cut from a dead ash tree.
The circle is about 13.5 inches / 34 cm in diameter. I feel like there are so many possibilities for painting this that I can't decide what to start with!
This patch of blue turkeytail fungus would be a challenge . . but so lovely. Much to ponder.
Ok, I would have taken time to ponder, but I was impatient. Turkey tail fungus it is!
I put down a layer of clear, glossy medium, then painted in the darkest areas with raw umber. It is two weeks until the local big Art Sale and Tour. Hmm.
Item one: Let Hero and Missile out for grazing time. This morning, having figured out the schedule, they were waiting right there for me.
Item two: hike a little way up the ridge to give Lady some running/sniffing/digging time. I'm being followed by a complaining tomcat.
Item three: WHAT??!!
What beauty! What fine color! Who is she?!
I actually saw this fungus a few days ago, before the big rains. At that time, each 'shelf' was only half the current diameter, and had a blocky, made-of-playdough look. They started out yellow, with a red blush in the center where they attach to the tree. Its mature color and form are stunning.
On, across the top of the ridge we go.
Return home, pausing to pet a chestnut brown snoot and a white snoot. Collapse. I really do feel awful, lately. Even the smallest exercise leaves me feeling exhausted.
There is a swamp willow (Salix nigra) at the edge of the yard that started slowly falling over several years ago. This type of willow has an unusual life strategy of getting old and cranky, slowly keeling over sideways near a stream, eventually getting low enough to start growing extra roots along what was formerly the trunk, and the branches on the side turn into new trunks in a small clonal colony. This one has several dead branches that are growing lovely shelf fungi.
Here's a photo from 2020, it has collapsed a lot more since then. As long as it doesn't completely block the little stream, I'm just going to let it do its thing.
From the road, I spotted some trash that had blown across the pond field. Imagine my surprise, when I went over to pick it up, to see that it was actually a massive puffball!
A massive puffball with two more normal-size friends. They are pure white when they first come up; these guys are much too old to eat even if I wanted to. Border collie and my foot for scale!
Just a bunch of little guys. Hanging out.
[ID: two photos of small brown shelf fungus and lichens on a small dead tree.]
Yesterday I picked my teenage daughter up from school right as her lunch period started. I had a packed lunch and we went to the city park nearby.
First we hunted for mushrooms. Not to eat, just to see how many different kinds we could find. Ended up being 8 different species in quite a small area, growing in a lawn underneath pines and oaks. Yellow, tan, red, brown, orange, grey, pure white - all lovely. Then we sat on a big bench swing to eat. Feeling scattered earlier in the day, I had managed to pack her lunch as I always do but forget to put my lunch in the bag. I *knew* I was making a picnic for both of us - and forgot to put anything in for me! This is, sadly, not all that odd. We sat on the swing and talked and she ate until a persistent hornet forced us to move. I actually set some of the applesauce he was interested in aside for him - but he refused to do anything but try determinedly to crawl into the container with her applesauce. Sheesh.
After eating we went and found some playground equipment that didn’t have any small kids on it and played on it ourselves. It’s fun to swing around and climb things no matter HOW old you are.
I took her back to school smiling, and we agreed to do it again before the weather gets too cool.
Oct 13, 2021
They are all babey
