Busy is a busy does

I've been working with a magnet, a rake, and a broom to clean up the concrete slab and the small bits of metal that are in the dirt around it. The 'good stuff' that was hidden in the garage included old rusted coffee cans full of old rusted nails of every size one could think of.

I do know that Rich's father also collected nails, even straight used ones. My Grandparents' generation never threw out things that could be re purposed or reused. My mom was the same way as was Rich's folks and Rich. For those that lived through very hard times, repurposing was not a fad but a necessity.

So, if the garage had never been crushed or inundated with water, most of those nails could have been useful to build something with the lumber that is in the dry confines of our machine shed.

Unfortunately, the clean up dropped a LOT of nails and chunks of miscellaneous metals all around the all garage. This weekend, I filled two 5 gallon buckets with pieces of metal, glass, and nails. 

Patrick will be back to do some more work this coming week in the meantime, I am looking for broken glass, metals, and sharp things along with metals. A good magnet on a handle is a great helper.

The dogs check on the progress and then go lay down on the porch. It is too tiring to watch me work.

I did manage to take some 'fun' time for me. On our morning hike/walk with my 4 legged pals, I took some toys.

Hannah is still learning to not always nose over toys while I am photographing. Charlie has that down pat.

The two shots below were done with a deep foggy morning and very little sunlight. I knew the fungi wouldn't stick around once the sun came out so I grabbed my 1:87 HO Scale mountain climbers and thought...this could be fun!

It turned out to be fun. Twice I dropped the tiny guy in the blue shirt. Thankfully it wasn't in a bunch of flowers and it was in the mulch where I could find him easily.

 I believe the fungi/mushroom is called Pleated Inky Caps. I find them often in the flowerbed mulch. They are doing a job enriching the soil and breaking down the mulch so I just admire them.

On the dog hike, I brought Qilin, the Mythical Creature from Lego. I built this not because I like the kid series Monkey Boy, but because the creature is posable and delightfully colorful.

I know that Qilin and the Ninjango character I acquired years ago seemed to just go together.

I carefully carried it out to the meadow. [Carefully, I didn't want to lose any pieces of this mythical creature!]

I think Lego missed the point in putting these characters in different toy stories. Definitely this guy and the dragon match in glowing and bright wonderful colors.

no dogs knocked this down!

I left the Mythical Creature at the campsite and followed the dogs deep into the woods. I let them be my guides. I should do that more often.

I found dozens of sights in my forest with Indian Pipes aka Monotropa Uniflora. I like the names: Ghost Plants and Indian Pipes better.

What an amazing background a group of them would make alongside a deer trail for my Princess Sara and her faithful bodyguard Joan of Knight.

Yes, Princess Sara rides a horse and carries her faithful stick horse which I am assuming has magical powers. She also has the little red dragon with her. They are on a mission and a journey to defeat some evil in the world.

After an early morning of tromping through the woods and getting soaked by the dew, we returned home to continue working on the cleaning the old garage site.

By late afternoon, I decided I'd had enough back breaking bending over work and charged up the mower to trim the yard. Over the week we had another half inch of rain along with humidity and heat so the grass decided to really get with the growing program again.

Now that it is out of the way, I don't have to deal with it until next week [hopefully].

I went to bed early. The dogs were exhausted from supervising all day.

But when I woke up around midnight, I couldn't help but stay up a bit longer to admire the Milky Way from the porch.

Looks like a busy short week ahead. 

I am planning this weekend to be joyful. With a celebration of my husband's life. Of course it will be bittersweet, but I carry him in my heart always.

Weekend Wanderings

Yesterday morning, we went early to the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. It was quite cool out still so we hoped to avoid the worst of the mosquitoes. 

August is a great time to hunt for mushrooms and odd plants on the Wintergreen Trail, especially after rains and humidity.

I think this is a Russula mushroom of some kind. Most of the ones I found were only about an inch tall. There were quite a few of them!

Here is chicken of the woods with slugs on it.

I have no idea what this is but it was inside a log and I had to use my cellphone flashlight to light it up.

Perhaps this is White Coral Fungi Jelly. It is quite rubbery feeling.

I think this is a type of Coral Fungi too, but it is still slightly different in shape and texture from the typical Coral Fungi I normally find. It seemed to be also growing from the earth which could have wood under the debris on the forest floor.

These below are the normal Coral Fungi that I am familiar with.

I have no idea what this is, but I liked how the texture appeared in the photo.

This in not a mushroom or fungi. It is actually a slime mold called Wolf's Milk.

These are not fungi, they are plants that don't have chlorophyll and go by various names. Indian Ghost Pipes are one. It was the name I learned as a kid. They actually do flower and drop seeds.

Then they turn black and whither away.

I also found Rattlesnake Plantain which has the most beautiful leaves.

It was a fun morning, we were at the Reserve before anyone else showed up and were leaving as the people started to show up around 10am. 

We found so many things to see and enjoy. 

I'll probably go back or to another similar place this week to enjoy looking for the odd things one can find along the bluffs of the Kickapoo.

The rest of the day was spent with boring yard work and getting Sunshine a pedicure. I was so busy visiting with Danny and Kristi that I never took any photos.

Oh well.

All is good. It appears that we are in for an all day rain.

Meanwhile...

It is August and that means the daylight each day changes quickly. 

August through November are the three months of the year where I can't seem to sit still. The weather is changing, the hours of daylight are changing.

I begin to chase the changes in the forest like I do with early spring. 

As the heavy growth of gooseberry bushes begin to drop leaves and other plants in the undergrowth begin to drop seeds and wilt, I find moving through parts of the forest easier.

This morning I got a fog notice on the weather app. I knew it would be foggy in the valleys because it cooled off so much overnight. I hoped the fog would drift up through the forest.

Off I went as soon as the sun began to peek through the trees. It was humid but not really foggy.

Our busy road:

On the way back home I took a different way and...

.... found some Indian Pipes 
aka Ghost Plants or the Scientific name:
Monotropa Uniflora .

I think these are some of the coolest plants that can be found in a forest.

Boy was I pleased to see that the high humidity, even though the fog dissipated quickly. It provided a beautiful morning atmosphere.

My favorite maple tree in the woods northeast of us.

The sights were pretty amazing as was the light.

I also stopped and took an opportunity to do something that has been on my mind since I got those little dragons.

An idea came to mind when I was looking at my collection of rocks. My son gave me a really cool rock years ago.  To me it looked liked a petrified egg.

I'm pretty sure ... well, this has to be...

I mean...

what else could it be...

but 

a Dragon Egg?

However....

I think someone else must be interested in it!

I spotted two Rock Monsters!

Glaciator and Sulfrix to be exact! 

Oh No!

Silly me. How I do love to play.

I think I should keep an eye out for Princess Sara and her Knight to see if they will come to the rescue in the Big Wild Forest.

😉

Hot and Stuff

This is just going to be about things I've seen over the past week including things of beauty, things that make me curious and things I photographed just because.

Wednesday's storm front. I was on the way to CrossFit when I saw that I was driving into the heart of a huge cell. The closer I got to town, the meaner it looked. According to the weather service it was to go northeast of us. 
I don't like storms, I don't like to be in storms. 
I've been in two tornadoes and one really exceptional storm in 2007.

I pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed my camera. I only had my IR camera with the 850nm filter. It really only captures stark black and white and really highlights details in clouds. We had some winds when the front came through along with rain but thankfully no damage.

Other areas had hail and up to 3 inches of hard quick rain.

Shot of the neighbor's cattle pasture at dawn. Yes, the cow in the middle of the photo is pooping. 

Dogwood. I found some! 

Wild Grapes! They look plentiful and I wonder about making grape jelly.

That would take a LOT!

Sumac. It looks like it wants to start turning colors! Heat and drought stress?

Elderberry flowers. Most are done flowering now and the berries are turning dark. This one had a tiny bee on it.

Queen Anne's Lace in the meadow across the fence to the east of us.

Ohhhh!

Chicken of the Woods? I saw it, I didn't pick it because it was too beautiful. However I would like to have an expert by my side to try something like this. 

Apparently my soldiers will keep an eye on it. It was too bloody hot and stormy to continue wandering around the woods with the heat and 'thick' air. But I will get back to it!

Indian Pipes! Generally they grow near an old oak's roots especially those oaks that have 'health' issues. Interesting to note that so many life forms are so intertwined with the forest like that. I mean I knew it, but I didn't KNOW it.

Moving right along. 

Last thing. 

The storm Wednesday night. Uffdah. The winds were pretty nasty so it looks like today is my day to go see if trees fell on the fence. Our corn was flattened and I found branches this morning down by the stock tank which is over 100 ft from the trees in one direction. Branches were down in another direction too and some found way out east of the house. No damage to buildings but small branches on top of the shed too! Interesting. You may be able to guess what I will write about later!

My Fungi Fun

For my work out of the day...yesterday, I was supposed to go out and power walk or jog and see how far I could go in 30 minutes.

Simple right?

So I grabbed my lighter sweatshirt and Charlie and we headed off with my phone on a map my hike app running. I had my little camera with me and decided ... you know... just in case....

So an hour and a half later, I'd actually covered over a mile. But I had spent so much of it peering into moss covered logs and crawling around mule dung, rotten wood, and searching under leaves.

Cool huh? Velvety Black Earth Tongue Fungi. Eww. I saw these last year and wondered what they were. This year I went to Mushroom and Fungi book to look them up. 

Red Banded Conch. On the same log but on the underside. By the way those little fungi from my last outing? They are on this log too! I counted 4 types of fungi on one log!

While not really a fungi, these Indian Pipes are often mistaken for them. They are of the blueberry plant family and are white as they have no chlorophyll. 

I have no idea what these little ones are, I will have to go back and see how they change!

These? Inky Caps. At least I think so. I'll go back and see if their tops turn black and icky. That will identify them for me. I'll go back and check them out if it ever stops raining.

I don't know the ID of these either, but I am working on it.

The top photo was taken on Sunday. The bottom was taken 5 days later. 
And there still is a slug at the end of them!

Oh and for the workout? Guess I'll have to have a Do Over!