myheartgoes

myheartgoes

Dylan's & my Hobbit House...made of living willow branches stuck in the ground, a fence made of mountain magnolia twigs pierced with wire thru the core as spacers & drilled twigs as posts, & assorted other hobbit sized furniture. Can be seen at woods edge somewhere in the mountains of NC.

Mushrooms! Who knew there was so many!

Came across this incredible blue mushroom in 2009 on a hike in NC. It was quite a surprise seeing as how I have never ever seen a blue mushroom before! The closest match I could find was an INDIGO MILKY especially since it is a vase shaped chanterelle and the stem in the ID looked similar with patches of blue color like a mosaic! An absolute gem of a mushroom. It was also the only blue one I found in the field guide.

 The mountains get incredible out croppings of mushrooms because there is so much forest debris, moisture and constant decomposition. After a rain one day I took probably 30 shots of so many different kinds of mushrooms I was amazed.

The upsweeping shapes of these caps put them in either the lactarii or polypores families. I'm not that educated yet as to what every shroom is, but I'm learning.

 I love these round orange button looking ones. But if I'm close on the ID, they are a poisonous Fly Agaric Button. Some of the names are quite alarming; Wolf's Milk Slime, Death Cap, Destroying Angel & Aborted Entoloma to name a few of those on preceding pages of Audubon's Mushroom ID book! These are probably just opening too. The cap appears to open & spread out further.

 

These Lobster Mushrooms are very common along the roadside near our cabin. Sprouting out of the browns & greys of the forest pine straw & leaf mold, their brilliant oranges and burning red is startling and beautiful. These are actually a mold

Haven't found this white & brown gilled upturned cup shaped one yet.

These next 3 shots are Amanitas; I think either Ragveil Amanita or Smith's Amanita. Absolutely the most perfect shaped, white gorgeous mushroom. A classic. The textured cap is beautiful.

 When my friend Deb & I came across this character sprouting out of the lawn of a cabin nearby we had to seriously inspect it further. Down to the split in the cap, it was an absolute rated X mushroom! Haven't found anything in my ID book that looks anything like this...maybe an inky cap, stinkhorn or earth tongue!!! But it was right next to the trio below. Definitely the same variety; the measles on top were quite distinctive.

Unidentified Polypore

 This may be a fully grown Fly Algaric or a Reddening Lepiota, but there are quite a few 'veiled' mushrooms with high attached collars. The acorn debris was thick at its base. I printed out an 8 x 10 of this & started a wall in the cabin of just mushrooms. One of my favorite shots.

These two are the same mushroom, different light readings to get the detail of the cap & the gills below. A perfect fairy table for afternoon tea.

Our 2010 In two pages or less...

My twist on the end of the year holiday letter. Pictures will always speak louder than words. But words help.

Comic Life by Plasq is a great ap allowing you to turn those photos into a whole lot more!

You learn something every day...

Those two cups of Red Rose tea had something to do with waking up at 3am last night, but the inability to turn off my brain made me think of several things worth blogging about. One of which was that day's walk with friend J.J. in the NC forests. Mountain spring time growth got J.J. excited enough to pop in and call me out for a walk. As we headed on our journey up the road talking about Bluettes and Pink ladies slipper, I showed her some plants I thought were the latter, but were actually imposters! The imposters growing in my woods, look very much like the leaves of Pink Ladies Slipper, but as J.J. pointed out, have too many leaves. Ladies slipper have only 2 perpendicular leaves coming out from the flower.





We headed to several woodland pockets where she showed me one of nature's most exotic woodland orchids. The woods showed no sign of man. Not even a step. Old growth Hemlocks, thick carpet of pine straw and gorgeous 2 leaved Ladies slippers all over the place! One flower looked grey but still held its form. As I touched it a cloud of spore-like dust was released!

From the USGS webpage: "In order to survive and reproduce, pink lady's slipper interacts with a fungus in the soil from the Rhizoctonia genus. Generally, orchid seeds do not have food supplies inside them like most other kinds of seeds. Pink lady’s slipper seeds require threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady's slipper seed. When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots."

The moments magic continued as in the next woodland crop sat a just emerged black swallowtail butterfly...body still fat, wings still creased and unfolding! The moments after the birth of a beautiful butterfly next to a rarely seen magical flower! If only Frodo were here!


Look closely...the black swallowtail is dead center in one photo and directly behind the pink ladies slipper in the other.

We found several other outcroppings of ladies slipper as well as a hemlock with hundreds of years of faces in its branching,
and an easy to miss new fungi J.J. referred to as matchstick fungus or “the devil’s matchstick” Cladonia floerkeana; a tiny, red tipped lichen growing on dead wood. It carpeted the ground in a sunny patch of clearing along the road.




Walking back thru the woods, we came out to the most prolific display of bluettes fielded along the creek. Patches of white and blue ones gave the impression of stars in a sky of green! Gorgeous! Bluettes are the flower on top of a plant looking very much like baby's tears (a houseplant I used to have in college) a moss-like creeping plant with tiny, round, shiny green leaves. But bluettes are a similar plant with a tiny 1/8" flower profusely covering the top in dense clumps. Quite a lot of magic for one day and one walk.


Also bought the cutest birdhouse...a mobile home for birds; birdhouse on wheelbarrow! From the local Thrift Store!

Kitchen Demolition

We are in the process of replacing a few appliances that have lasted 20+ years & are on the way out.

JOIN FAIR TAX MOVEMENT!

Been meaning to read the Fair Tax Website info for some time & finally did it. I am all for this and want to show my support. Check out the Fair Tax Website at www.FairTax.org and see for yourself.

I believe workers should keep their whole paychecks, don't you?

www.FairTax.org