Of this and that

Well let's start out with a photo of Charlie who is so honest and so wise. He is the Zen Master of Calm unless he meets you for the first time. Then he is all wiggly and happy. He becomes calm again very quickly.

Here he is sitting and watching a vole hole next to the porch. He is listening and waiting. He doesn't kill the vole, he just observes and then sniffs at them to make them feel uncomfortable? 

He sure can be focused. He will spend the afternoon like this. I wonder if he can hear them under the dirt? I know he has done that in other parts of the yard.

Around the side of the yard under the honey locust tree that is dying I found these Inky Caps.

In a way they are kind of cool and interesting. Sort of ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Look at the one above. There is a fly on it! What a surprise it was for me to see it when I opened up the image larger.

And then they turn into inky slime. Certain strange varieties can be eaten and certain ones are poison. People have collected the goo and make an ink from them too. Thus I suppose the reason they are called Inky Caps.

I'm going to hit some trails today and look for Slime Mold and other cool Fungi. September, especially a day after a rainstorm is a great Fungi month!

The colors are also going to be amazing.

If you live where the leaves change, go out and enjoy.

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!