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.

Young Me...

I heard about the 'aging' photo challenge on FB by accident the other day. Guess I'm not one of those that likes selfies.
Nor do I like to remind myself of how weathered my face has become. I say weathered because I think it is kinder than saying old and wrinkled.

Perhaps the weather does have a lot to do with my skin. I don't really protect it from the rough dry winter air while hiking. I do use sunscreen on my face but most of the time I forget.

I don't spend much time indoors. Even with the snow fall today, I was out picking up branches and sticks from the blow down we had two years ago. I tossed hundreds of chunks of wood, bark, and sticks onto a small brush fire that I have had going since 10 am this morning.
[It is now nearly 3:30 pm and I am done in!] I can't believe how many branches and dead old wood I picked up from the north side of the little shed.

I explained to Rich that I may as well go in there and clean it up while there were no weeds growing and while there were no bugs. Besides, it is much better to do something like that than sitting in the house watching the snow fall to the ground.

I tidied up in the large shed and gave Mica and extra helping of hay. I put the hay to put out for this evening in the large black carcass sled.

It looks like I may have to drive the skid steer again this weekend. We were only supposed to get a few inches. Well that changed to the change of a bunch. There is a prediction of up to 9 inches or maybe only 5.
The temperatures are going to plummet again which will make the ice formations do more interesting things along the creek bottom.

Oh wait...
I started out talking about the Aging Challenge photos. Huh.
Well here are a few young photos of me over the years.

My brother had many of my father's slides scanned and digitalized.

Here are a few of my younger self.

I believe this is the winter of 1965. I'm standing watching Kilauea in the distance. I'm actually at the Halemaumau vent. I'm sure that has changed.

Here we are as a family. Dad is taking the photo. We are on the Devastation Trail which was a boardwalk then. We drove the whole park on the Chain of Craters Road which was closed in 1969 because of a lava flow. However, it keeps getting rebuilt on top of the new lava flows....

There I am in the middle belly surfing on stryofoam boards at Hapuna Beach, this was before their was the Queen's Highway to Kona. And this was before the Mauna Kea Hotel was built just north of Hapuna.
There were no shelters or bathrooms then either.

Years later?

Hapuna Beach:

My mother is on the right and I am on the left. I think this is one of my favorite photos of all time. My mom and I look like sisters. Dad caught us in a moment where we aren't paying attention to each other but mom and I ... are both lost in our own thoughts...

There it is ... the young me.

Reading Far Side of Fifty's Blog has brought back fond memories just as my brother began posting photos.