This is yet another category of "things that fascinate me". All these photos (except one, taken a week earlier) were snapped on the day after Thanksgiving when the kids and I went hunting on our property for mushrooms. It had rained on T-Day, so conditions were perfect.
Some are so tiny (like pinheads so I couldn't get good shots) and then you'll see one of the monster mushes we found with Rachel's hand in the picture for scale. Those grow next to the house every year under an oak. It's great fun to go looking for them all. So many kinds!! I didn't count the number of varieties, but there were more than a dozen, for sure. There are new discoveries each season, so far.
As I mentioned in the T-Day post, we have a big mushroom-ID book, but it's still almost impossible to be sure which are which--too much similarity. There are some that, we were pretty sure, were edible, even delicious ("choice" in the book), but were not brave (or dumb) enough to put them to the ultimate test. The huge ones were labeled as "choice", we think. A few days later, they were completely gone--eaten by deer. My guess is that they were, indeed, quite delicious, since I found not one sick deer anywhere in the yard.
The winds have dried many of them out, now, and the big season is over until late spring, when it warms up enough. Still, I walk slowly, eyes to the ground, scanning for more more more. I think it will take a big snow event to break my little obsession.
Wish I was a better photographer, but here's the best I could do with these marvelous little fungi (mag up on these to get the best view)...
Seriously? It's like I blinked in August and suddenly it was Thanksgiving.
The bright reds, oranges and yellows are fading, now. We've had quite the wind storms this week, which are nature's way of separating the leaves from the trees so that the snow doesn't break the branches onto our power lines and make Tom grumpy. Only somewhat effective, I must say.
By way of hanging on to the awesome colors just a little longer, I'm just going to post some pics I took of our patio last month.
Since we moved here, I've been planting some fall color both near the house and a little farther away so as to get some of our own fall festival each year. I know--most of the trees are still quite little, but they're showing great future potential if the deer don't eat them. The patio is coming along nicely with the American Tulip tree (already here when we arrived) as the sunshine-yellow centerpiece. The Japanese maples (I can't ever have enough of them), turn different colors, depending on the variety. We have a bit of each--red, orange and golden yellow. The Japanese barberry is the flaming shrub in the corner of the patio. I didn't care for it and almost pulled it when we moved in, but it shows an amazing range of color from spring to fall. So, in spite of the stickers, I let it stay.
One of the things I love about the color up here is how it all shows against the dark green of the pines, firs and cedars. The shock of it!
Anyway, the photos:
