Rain, Morels, Yard and Whatnot

On Monday I went hiking at Duck Egg with the intent of searching for Morel Mushrooms.

Instead, I found some amazing bluebell fields.

I also found False Morels.

Lots of them! All over the place!

They are pretty interesting and sort of wickedly cool.

 

They are different from Morels in that they are solid through and through and not hollow like a Morel is.

Hiking in Duck Egg is a crazy sort of adventure ... that is, if you can make sense of the signs:

The signs are getting better than what they used to be though:

The trails basically circle around the dam which protects areas from flooding. The altitude changes from the ridge to the valley are about 300 feet. Trails zig and zag up and down steep hillsides. The horse trails are really quite wonderful and will make the equine work hard. Hubby and I used to ride Duck Egg quite a bit.

I did find 3 Morels the next day in our woods.

They hide! Actually, because of the garlic mustard 'invasion' they are getting pretty hard to find:

With all the rain and the warmth, the plants are growing with great gusto and soon it will be very hard to find the delicious fungi.

The last few years were too dry or too hot for good Morels to appear. The conditions have to be just so and their are quite a few other factors and conditions that have to be met for them to flourish too.

I do like Morels, but I won't dedicate my days to hunting for them as I have so many other duties to attend to.

I went out to the Meadow to look under the old apple trees for Morels and I found a broken Turkey Egg. So they are nesting right now. 
 

I stopped by the Hawthorne Trees to see how they were doing. They are flowering now. One of the trees still has reddish leaves with buds, but I found this one in full bloom. Note the thorn! 

I still think these are amazingly beautiful trees.

Duty keeps calling in the form of mowing the yard. Hubby has an old zero turn mower that has a deck that has to be flipped in order to clean it properly.

We did get it flipped and it is always a total B--tch to get it flipped and back together properly. With his lack of ability for doing any heavy work, it is proving to be near impossible to get it done. I've cleaned it and now it has been sitting for 3 days not ... quite put back together.

I have a little self propelled mower and have been doing piece by piece mowing when I can between rains and foggy mornings. 

I have a notion to just run a temporary fence over certain sections of the yard and let the equine do the work at least for this growth period.

I did that in the 'lane' which is a hilly grassy lane between two pastures. The gals picked it pretty clean and then I mowed what was left. I have hoof impressions in the lane but the grass is no longer knee high.

...Hey...it has been done before!

Photos from many years ago.  2006 and 2008. I think hubby was in the hospital at these times and I couldn't keep up with mowing because I worked full time and drove to Madison to see hubby on my days off.

However...I learned not to hang laundry out when they were in the yard...

The yard never was worse for wear and they did a good job.

A large perfectly mowed yard is very underrated. I guess I shouldn't complain though, last year we mowed the yard 4 times all summer.

The rain and frustration are welcome.

One foot in front of

 ---

the other....

We got some snow. Around here we call it free fertilizer. In the spring the snow delivers nitrogen to the land it falls on and as it melts, it fertilizes the ground. We call it the poor man's fertilizer.

Charlie and I got out for our first hike since Saturday. That is a long lay off for me. We enjoyed the fresh air and went down in the valley to check out the tiny trout pond in the stream.

They were fine and flitting about under a skiff of ice that was rapidly melting.

I enjoyed the hike and didn't rush. All sorts of plants are budding out. The gooseberries, multiflora rose, and barberry bushes to name a few. I was really enjoying the birdsong more than anything else.

I saw a lot of Robins. In the first shot the Robin is in a tree that has a grapevine in it. He/she was eating the dried fruit pulp. Back in our pasture, the Robins were actually getting worms from the ground.

This Robin was with several Juncos who were getting grit from the gravel road. I find watching birds and listening to them relaxing in so many ways.

Each spring I get Bird Fever and tell myself that I am going to learn more and more about birds. That usually falls by the wayside when the wildflowers start to do their thing in the woods. But...yes, one of these fine years, I'm going to get serious. I'd love to go along the Mississippi River and watch those birds come in.

When I worked at the Genoa Power Plant, we used to watch them at our leisure while we were doing our rounds.

Now just the dry cask storage is left as they demolished the plant this week. 20 second video:

Anyway, I got off track. While working at the river for years, I got to watch all sorts of birds migrate through the area. At the time I wasn't interested in ID'ing them.

Maybe in the future I can have time to do such things. One can hope and have dreams right?

Meanwhile in the woods. I found it quite odd that there are still bucks running around with a full set or half set of antlers towards the middle and end of March. I usually start finding sheds towards the end of February. These are trail cam shots.

This is beginning to be an odd year.

I think I'll go for my morning walk with Charlie and then just do some experimenting with Still Life and lighting.

I'm currently messing around with a build that the grandkids left behind.

I am modifying it slightly to experiment with different colors and minifigs. I keep moving figures around and changing things to see if a storyline will appear.

Sometimes things just seem to click and other times they don't. I like this scene. The softness was created by focusing through other bits of Legos.

I need to get things prepared for our busy week. I have multiple appointments to negotiate through Friday and an arrival of another Grandkid.

This weekend looks like my only day to chill out and relax a bit.

One foot in front of the other.

Peregrinate

 to travel or journey

especially on foot...

That is my word of the day. 

In a sense, it also means Wanderlust except the word specifies journeying on foot.

And I love to journey on foot. I love exploring. I like moving and always have. I used to run distances at one time, then I transferred that love to distance bicycling, then distance riding, and then back to 

Peregrinating.

After spending two weeks stuck indoors and dealing with multiple phone calls to prepare for surgery and after a year of terrible vision...

I shut the door and stepped out.

And the world was a wonder.

Charlie and I just wandered about through our creek bottom and admired the ice. The temperatures were warm but the sun rarely shines in this section of the creek so we were able to enjoy the frozen tundra.

Photo of me, now sporting hubby's fishing shades. Sorry, I'm not so great at selfies. 

Ice formation in the creek:

Hiking the creek:

The meadow:

The Girls, hiding out in the woods, staying in the sun and out of the winds:

The Boss:

Today we are going to traipse about at the Reserve in the areas that no longer have trails on the map.

Charlie and I enjoy being rovers and wandering together. 

I will throw one more word out for fun. 

We will maunder about, just idly exploring, collecting our thoughts, and wandering more or less.

The definition of the word is more explicitly about one who talks on aimlessly or moves about aimlessly...

That fits me also.

Hay Valley Spring Hike

It was time for our second Annual Spring Hike at Kickapoo Valley Reserve. Fellow Blogger Aurora [equine expressions] and I studied the weather and decided to go for it this week.

Not only was she early to our meet up place, she said she didn't get lost. 

Once we started, our Trail Master kept us on the right track.

At first glance, the trail may look a bit mundane and even boring. But it isn't. Spring feels a bit late this year, but ...

...it is slowly emerging and with a few warmer days it will explode.

If one looks closely, the flowers are emerging on certain hillsides.

Bloodroot

Dutchman's Breeches

Fiddlesticks
--Ferns

Hepatica
[see the fuzzy leaves?]

Wild Photographer
on the loose:

 

We stopped a lot and just soaked in the forest sounds. The day was a bit overcast and at times the sun peeked through but we just walked, talked, and admired everything along the trail.

And photographers who hike together will often grab a candid of the other person. Aurora was no exception. She caught me playing with my Legos.

What was I doing? Well, I was setting up a Lego BigFoot inside a 'cave'. However, I wasn't sure that he should have a fire inside a hollow tree.

The place I really wanted Aurora to see was the old foundation.

This was a much better place to discover Bigfoot.

Photos by
Aurora!

And this is what I was shooting. I found Bigfoot!!!! He was taking a photo of me!

We spent a lot of time looking at this foundation. It may be the only remains of one of the farm buildings that were purchased to make way for the dam that didn't happen.

We took our time and strolled, stopping often to look at things. I never even glanced to see what time it was. I was enjoying everything so much. Female human company AND the great outdoors.

Pussy Toes

this plant had

me stumped until I recalled

finding them before!

Shining Firmoss

If I'd had my way, I would have not even gone back to my vehicle. I would have waved a magic wand and become a woodland elf.

That outing relaxed me so much, it lasted through the weekend. I'm so chill right now I could just melt right into the ground and enjoy the misty rainfall.

Weekend weather

Saturday morning I awoke to a beautiful snowfall coming down. If this had been November instead of April, I would have been out rejoicing like a child.

Hey, even I can get tired of winter eventually!

By one in the afternoon the snow had disappeared and left behind a soggy mess of muck. I skipped my daily walk and went around the yard picking up sticks. 

The daffodils and tulips I'd planted 20 some years ago were poking their tips out of the grass where my large flower garden once stood. They needed to be dug up and separated for them to flower decently. 

I grabbed a shovel and stuck it into the grass around one clump. The frost was out of the ground and I could dig them up.

I knelt in the wet grass and carefully pulled daffy bulbs apart. I filled an old kettle with them and then wondered where in the heck I was going to put all of them.

Some bulbs were of good size and some were tiny. I walked to the east fence line. They might grow well there and be a cheery sight to anyone coming down our driveway. They'd die back by the time I needed to mow or let Sven the goat graze in the area.

Hubby and I always disagree on flower beds. He believes they are a waste of time and a pain to mow around. I think most of the yard should be full of flowers. I remember the first spring I lived here and was so surprised to see peonies coming up.

Hubby said he just mowed them down. I moved them to safe places where the mower can't go.

Yesterday I took a kettle full of daffodils and planted them in the 'Forest Garden'. It starts out sunny but as the leaves fill in, the place becomes a shaded garden. Last year I found that Hostas do well there [if the deer don't eat them] along with Ajuga and Vinca. I planted tiny transplants in the crevices of the rocks last year to see if they'd survive the winter.

They did! Under all the leaves and sticks they are still thriving!

I will litter the shaded garden with begonias this year for color and some violets. Time will tell and after some more research I may find other plants to add.

I am waiting to see if the ferns made it through the winter. If they did, I'll add some more from the surrounding forest. If not, well it is obvious that the area isn't good for them.

I did get in an early morning walk on Sunday and we found a huge area of Skunk Cabbage appearing near the creek.

See who I found in a Skunk Cabbage?

At the Big Spring I found one Marsh Marigold that looked like it had been bitten by frost.
The other plants were up and had buds on them.

So it seems spring is headed our way.