It's Dandy Time

Some see a weed.

Some see a wish.

Who loves Dandelions?
Not everyone.

Those sneaky little yellow flowers turn white and then spread their fluff all over the place!

The flowers heads duck when you mow over them and then spring back up after you have passed. Those Dandelions are the bane of so many suburban yards. People fight like heck to rid their yards of these bright yellow spring flowers.

Of course, I don't care. Once spring is over, they aren't as noticeable and their foliage is green, just like the rest of the yard.

But for a couple of weeks, they are out there glowing in the morning light and their seeds of fluff blow everywhere.

Dandelions are just little weeds that want 

to be loved like other flowers ~~~
Heather Babcock

Be like a dandelion

Scatter dreams in the breezes.

Colors in December & Winter's Solstice

I do love the fact that the month of December gives me an opportunity to enjoy tons of beautiful lights indoors and so many things to practice Still Life with.

The felted snowman and the little ceramic tree were items I used to decorate my MIL's room when she was in the Nursing Home.

Gnomes. Well, since I live in a Nordic part of Wisconsin, we all love Gnomes. You can't go anywhere without seeing Gnomes and Trolls in gift stores.

I am searching for a gnarly looking troll to add to my collection.

I did get out for some hiking this week. I went out with one thing in mind. To find some December Colors.

Along Old Hwy 131 at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve --> Highbush Cranberry!

Along a deer trail at home on a gloomy day ----> Multiflora Rose 

When I got down to the creek bed I sat on rocks and looked for some teenie tiny things. This log lays across the rocks and the place where the creek flows in wetter years.

So I got up close and personal with the moss. 

Powderhorn Lichen. Those tips should turn bright red and 'flower' in February!

This grey lichen was found on an old oak log. The tree had been blown down late in the year in 2018. It is near the Powderhorn lichen I photographed above but a different log.

A common name is Rosette Lichen. I think. Since I am no expert, this is a pretty good guess.

Mosses and Lichens are pretty easy to spot in the winter since there are no leaves to hide them!

Happy Winter's Solstice!

It was too overcast to enjoy a beautiful sunrise, so I will give you this one from a few years ago!

The Brown season turns to....Lichen

The brown season is coming in strong. The last few cold nights of 24 degrees F have caused leaves to do sudden dumps.

The maple forest was incredible with spots of yellow where the maples dropped everything overnight. The oaks before the last cold days still had the brilliant red. I checked the leaves and the brilliant reds were Red Oaks. The dullish leaves were White Oaks.

Oaks in the distance before

two nights of 20 degree weather.

The green in the lower portion of the above photo is of those nasty Buckthorn Trees. They stay green well into late November.

A White Oak with a nekked Birch in front of it.

Yesterday in the late afternoon, I decided to take Charlie and just look for Lichen. Perhaps with a different subject to find, I'd feel better about the brown season.

What I did not know is that some Lichen actually prefer fall and winter. There is more moisture and it isn't as hot. Some Lichen go dormant in the cold weather. Either way, they are easier to find in the fall and spring without all of the other plants hiding them.

Lichen are super easy to find. This is a shot of a tree trunk on a trail and two different Lichens on the tree.

Some sort of Foliose Lichen with some 

sort of brown/blackish lichen or moss?

More Lichen.

I have no idea!
Found on a mossy rock.

Logs, logs...logs.
This seems to be a great place to find Lichen. See the arrow? That points to the place where I used my macro lens to shoot this lichen embedded in moss. 

I used a small pouch filled with soy husks as a tripod and set the camera to its very narrow 'focus' stack feature.

I'm not going to try and ID it, but just thought it was rather pretty and amazing that we can see something So Tiny!

Here it is in a larger photo. I just dig the colors.

It just looks like a crazy foreign world doesn't it?

I found some dried up orange fungi mixed in with some pretty greenish/bluish turquoise colored Lichen. The orange fungi is often called False Turkey Tail.

And I leave this blog with my favorite shot of a beautiful Yellow Lichen, which is rumored to be a Sunburst [common name] Lichen.

First my finger next to the multi colored Lichens...

Then The Happy Lichen.... isn't it cute? Look at the brilliant colors!

Like

Lichen

Fungi Fun Guy!

Well I think these are Boletes that look like they have seen better days. 

I found these not far from an old tall oak in our forest that has a racoon den in its top.

Remember the ones I said were Wolf Farts? These are the same ones a few days later.

So I think some fungi are only beautiful when they are just coming out of the ground. 

I thought I'd found Turkey Fan Fungi. But no I didn't!

The Scientific name I believe is: Daedaleopsis confragosa. 
Try to say that a few times quickly. I can't.

I prefer a common name like Blushing Bracket [if it turns red], another name is Thin mazed flat polypore. 

That doesn't sound very memorable either.

I'm just going to call it .. the Fake Turkey Fan Fungi.

The Turkey Fan Fungi.

Scientific name: Trametes versicolor

I found this about 200 feet from the other one. Last year, this log had a different kind of fungi on it and at the base of the tree where half the tree is sort of alive.

I found white jelly fungi all over one section of our woods. Some of the pieces were rather large and looked like the common jelly fungi of Witch's Butter but pure white.

I like the common name which is easy to remember.

Snow Fungus.

Scientific name: Tremella fuciformis

Apparently this is 'good' stuff which has anti-inflammatory properties. Um. Still not sure I'd go with eating this. You can purchase different forms of this fungi to eat, to take as a pill, or to use on your skin.

I know there is so much we don't know about what is growing around us.

Then I found this which was aged and old. Curious that I first thought someone had left some material in the woods.

I have no clue what it might be. Obviously it grew a long time ago and turned black.

Fungi/mushrooms are very short lived. The following is some sort of Japanese Umbrella fungi, I think. I found it at 8 am when I headed out to check the fences.

I returned to look at it after I'd done chores and picked sweet corn.
In two hours, it looked like this....

These fungi/molds/mushrooms are constantly changing.

I consider myself extremely lucky to find them as they Pupawee. That is a Potowatami word for Emerge or Passage. 

Here are some more slightly ugly looking fungi, but I found them quite beautiful in the way they were grouped and in all different stages of their short lives.

Ink caps

I took a series of photos of one type of fungi that I think is pretty interesting. I found them when they were fresh and glistening. I took photos in a series of days to see what they looked like when they were done with their job. I won't put it here today but will save it for another time.

After 4.5 inches of rain in the past 24 hours, I'm headed out to check out the woods once more and see what will surprise me.

I leave you with this Fun Guy. 

One of my tiny soldiers sitting on an Oyster Mushroom.

Naturalist Curiosity

How do we love slime molds and fungi? 
Well, I assume not a lot of people like it.

I don't know why insects, slime mold, and fungi fascinate me. Maybe it is because they are part of such an incredibly small world that we never stop to look at.

White Tube Slime 
or
White Footed Slime
or
Honeycomb Coral Slime?

Take your pick. Hopefully I can go back out today and see if this grew at all and that might help ID it.
This slime mold [?] is smaller than a pencil lead.

Who am
I?

I don't know! There are possibilities, but none of the beetles I found while searching was this tiny. This insect is perched on one goldenrod blossom, that makes it very small.

More cool

slime molds

The penny is used to give the viewer an idea at the size of the cool white slimey stuff. It actually feels rather sticky. But its webs and details are so intriguing.

More cool

strange slime/fungi

white 'stuff'

Of course, this could be white footed slime which if it remains in a moist and warm place would develop into something identifiable. But the forecast looks dry for the next 7 to 8 days.

And then on to my favorites. The Dog Barf/Vomit or another name? Deer Barf! 

Or perhaps Scrambled Egg Slime.

Growing on my

mulch.

Harmless but strange!

Growing on a stump in the pasture.

My favorite fall insect. The Orb Weaver. She decided to set up in my Petunias and has been catching those awful Japanese Beetles that destroy my 4 O'Clocks!

Golden Orb Weaver

Garden

I like her, she is very productive. I've seen her wrap up about 2 of these beetles a day. I'm sure her 'kids' will love what she stored for them!

Lastly.
My only decent star trails/Perseids photo. I sat in the driveway yesterday morning and watched for a while before I decided to try and get a photo. There were 3 meteors that flashed through, but because I used LiveComp, the star trails sort of hide them. This was over my house which was Northwest and not the direction I was supposed to be looking.

And for those who 'see' things. I took a shot of a Teddy Bear cloud. I spent all morning trying to get that SD card to work. I lost it all by reformatting it. That is the first time in 10 years that happened to me. 

However to save the day, I took a terrible shot through the screen of a Duck while we were eating supper.

Ducky or

Bird 

in a wire Cage!

There.
I am off to find more curiosities in small places. 

I still am not allowed to do strenuous things. So I am ducking out of mowing and taking the afternoon to go explore a refurbished trail at KVR.

[Crossed Fingers...that is what I wish to do!]

tiny tiny Tiny

We had a hard frost Sunday morning. I thought I'd take a walk to the creek and around the pastures to see if I could find anything 'frosty' and cool. 

I pulled out my 30mm macro lens. The one that you have to get down and dirty with. Well, not really down and dirty ~ but only if you want to...and I often can be found nearly laying in the dirt or on the forest floor bugs be damned. 

First let me say that we have an incredible forest around us. There is so much to see that it is overwhelming. I have to go to the ridge to get a landscape shot. The woods becomes a place of little things to notice and see. The tiny flowers, the moss, the lichen, the fungi, and the insects. I seem to notice and enjoy finding the little things sometimes more than the Big Picture.

Here is a dandelion from the yard on Saturday. Those little curls just beg to be photographed. The flower on its own isn't impressive, but what is inside it...is.

[Shot with the microscopic feature on my TG6 Olympus pocket camera.]

I have no idea what kind of insect this is, but it has pollen on it from the dandelion so I imagine it uses it as food? Shot with the 30mm lens. The frustration of this lens is my inability to 'get' all of the insect in focus.

So I went searching for frosty things and bugs. The sky was unremarkable other than the sun just coming up. I spotted a doe who whistled at me and ran off. But I was more interested in the tiny things I could find.

I was pretty excited over the dandelions. When I showed these to Rich his reaction was rather ambivalent. 

The ice crystals were pretty damned awesome.

I decided to head on down into the woods and see what I could find along the creek. Was it warmer near the creek? Or was it colder? 

My shadow in the frosted pasture.

It took me a while to get to the creek. I kept stopping to peer at tiny flowers coming up and looking at the violets that were still closed against the cold. Berry briars had frost on some leaves as did the multi floral rose bushes. 

The sun was peeking into the creek and a tiny bit of steam was rising from the water. By mid summer this creek will be obscured with Jewel Weed and other plants. The view in early spring is always amazing.

I went in search of moss. Who would have guessed?

This type of moss had leaves like cups that caught the moisture in the air. I thought this was ingenious. No wonder moss could live through droughts. This moss was just above the creek on a rock.

And this moss was on another piece of wood. I noted that it was 'flowering'. Well they really don't flower but do release spores. The blue is the creek just below the moss covered log. I have NO idea what type of moss it is. 

Imagine my delight to find some more moss that looked like the little spore things had exploded!

I think the proper name for this may be Sporophyte but do not hold me to it.

Here it is cropped in tighter....

I also found many ferns beginning to unfurl. The maidenhair fern is one of my favorites but I found about four different kinds.

I do like tiny things. That world is so fascinating.

Looking forward to today's weather as we are supposed to warm up to nearly 70!