Nature is curious

Bat: Found under my car a few days ago. I picked it up with cardboard and moved it into shade and foliage on the north side of the house.
 

Our fungi hunts were very successful, both Olive and I bagged full canvas bags of both Golden Oysters and Chicken of the woods the day after we got 2/10ths of an inch of rain. [That was last Sunday]

However, when I went to our forest the next day all I found were nasty slugs climbing all over the oysters. Even though that is gross, I thought it was interesting. The slugs love moisture and it makes sense that they would gather just above the lowest part of our narrow valley and steep hillsides to enjoy the moisture.

For your entertainment....

Classica slug dance -> video is 15 seconds long.

We have misty humid mornings 

and 35% humidity by early afternoon with brown/blue skies.

The colors of the morning sunrise are orange.

The evenings just fade away...

With poor air quality and intense heat, not much is going on around here. My days consist of getting things done outdoors before noon.

Happy Summer to everyone. This summer is sure and odd one.

Crazy about Fungi

 

I cannot recall ever finding these wild fungi before. They are growing in 'gregarious' groups and solo on this ancient dying box elder tree in the Buckthorn forest.

Though we know that box elders never really die, they just send out new shoots.

I couldn't help myself since I seem to always have a little something extra in my pockets.

I believe the proper scientific name for these are: leucopholiota decorosa. I have not found a common name for them yet.

Here is a look at what a slightly older bunch looks like:

I am so fascinated by them that I keep going back to look at them. Thank goodness, they are a short walk from the house.

A bit further down the hill I found this unidentified fungi. Looks like a Slug Love Fest going on...

I found an Artist Conk also known as a shelf polypore.

Each year I bring one home and do this:

I'm not very good at drawing with sticks. I let it dry and then bring it indoors for my fall display on a little table. It feels nice and woodsy. I know, I'm a bit odd. 

Oh! And on my way back from the woods I found very fresh Chicken of the Woods. So I picked just a little and cooked it up for us to taste. 

We lived. I may pick some more and cook them up to go with our burgers tonight. 

I couldn't resist this one either. For a long time I wanted to try this with a tiny figure and even tinier tea cup.

This is my 'creative' play. It was so hard to place that cup in a saucer and balance it on that tiny fungi. It was fun trying to find a perfect spot for the little squirrel too. I must have tried about 10 angles and different spots to shoot from.

With this tiny tea set, I got tiny plates and silverware. I have to place the silverware with tweezers because my fumbly fingers won't work with such tiny items.

The 'table' is a piece of pine bark. I just made those 'shrooms out of Magic Model clay stuff. Behind them are the twigs that are now painted and have funky moss glued to them.

Rich walks by my little thing and shakes his head then pats me on the head.

More on that at another time.

In the meantime...enjoy fall and enjoy looking at the forest floor as well as the fall foliage.

Happy Hunting....

Plans

The best laid plans o' mice and men/ gang aft a-gley. ~Robert Burns.
From the poem: To a Mouse

These words came to me Friday for so many reasons. I decided to look up the 'quote' and read the poem. The words were used by John Steinbeck, but he took them from the poem written in 1785. 

We humans look forward and back while the mouse only lives in the present. 

My plans took a turn and I was really not happy about it. But then I decided to not walk around the house and be a Grumpy Grouch. I made use of my time by getting appointments [for myself and the 'Ru] done and so much more.

Things worked out just fine and our day was enjoyable. I even got to go out for a bit to hunt slime molds and strange fungi.

I know my time was limited because the forecast is for dry weather coming up. Find the slime mold before it dries up!

Red Raspberry Slime Mold!

Kisses with a Slug

Rich mowed Friday like the dickens and I did the hillside slowly. I think it would have been worse if I let Rich do it and tip the mower. As it was, when he started it up on Saturday he had a melt down. There was a puddle of 'something' under where he parked it.

After an investigation I showed him that he'd obviously run over something he shouldn't have with the mower and busted up the filter for the hyrostatic...something or another. He got upset and angry and blamed it on the shop. I walked around the yard and found the protective cover to the filter and showed him wear he had backed up into some angle iron and pipe in his 'junk' pile and sheared off the cover....and dented the filter putting a hole in it.

I asked him why he mowed so close and his reply was that he didn't know it was there. I went around to the other side and spray painted other pipes white and blue.

Is his 'driving' and memory worse? Um, maybe. But for me to take away his mowing privileges certainly would be a slap in the face. He just plain forgot he had stuff there. And he really likes to mow.

I was proud of me for not playing the blame game and yelling at him. Instead, I'll make another trip to the shop and see how we can get the machine fixed again.

I filled Ol' Smokey up with gas [my Crappy Lawn old semi self propelled mower], checked the oil and fired her up. I tackled a section that Rich had been telling me he would do. It was knee deep and quite the adventure! 

I ran Ol' Smokey out of gas and stuck her away for the next crappy project. I have one more tough and rough section to do but decided to go with plan B. Pony Mowing.

I use Sven first who eats the icky weeds and then Lil' Richard comes through and eats the grasses. If I give him 24 hours there he will crop it all close to the ground. This is a spot that has to be hand mowed because it has not yet been graded out. I've got to get the trees cut down first and then hire someone to come in and grade it.

I dropped my plans for KVR but ...

YES!

Charlie and I went this Sunday morning. We found some radically cool fungi and slime mold both at KVR and in our woods. 

Rain, Slugs, and Bugs

So the rain brought out Slugs and bugs...

And very cool fungi. Some sort of slime mold??? 

Found Black Nightshade. Nasty stuff.

Slug heads in Fungi.

Witch's butter perhaps? Being guarded by my tiny soldiers.

Bright yellow slime mold. Some of it creeping over the Witch's Butter.

Chicken of the Woods? Old?

Grasshopper.

A sluggo stand off...

A very cheerful dog enjoying the cooler weather...

Ready???

Hummingbird Moth!

This is the fastest moving moth I have ever encountered and this is only the second time in 30 years that I've seen one. The first time I could only watch and wonder.

It probably took at least 30 or more tries before I finally got half way decent shot of this moth.

It's wings are translucent and it is sort of beautiful and ugly at the same time. 

That was my rainy day. Not that interesting unless you are a bug or slug or some sort of slime mold.

However.

I had some very cool stuff happen today. Thursday. I'm still mulling it over.

 

Rainy Day

Sometimes things can be a bit overwhelming. So I take short time outs.

What the heck is a time out?
Well, I take Charlie for a walk in the rain for example. Charlie is also up for any sort of activities. Be it short or long.
While I am with Charlie, I don't think much about all of the overwhelming changes of the past year. I sort of just walk along and enjoy the smells and sounds of being outside.

Yesterday it was raining pretty hard most of the day, I decided to go ahead and try out the $4 umbrella I had purchased. It actually worked pretty nicely. Charlie and I took a walk up the driveway and out the dead end road. I dropped his little cord and let him go.
Charlie saw a squirrel down the road and took off as hard as his little legs could carry him.
The squirrel looked up and disappeared into the long grass.

Charlie didn't see where the squirrel went and was a bit perplexed. I caught him up and we continued the walk.
We checked the mail and the box was empty so I returned Charlie to the house where he protested.

I grabbed my camera and decided to see if I could get a photo of the coral fungi that I'd spotted in the morning when I checked the meadow fence.

I had a huge selection of fresh fungi to choose from. I took a few shots and then headed down to check on the creek. The neighbor kids and mom wanted to see the 'new' ridge road on Friday and have a 'creek' adventure.
That means laughing children and lots of splashing in the water.

Laughter from children always brightens my day.

The road didn't wash much and I tried to mentally calculate how I'd get the pasture grass seed down where I wanted to spread it. Hmmm. Kids + Wagon + plus bag of seed = extra helping hands. Besides, it is always more fun to have company when doing things. I could spread seed and the others could play.

I had told Rich that I wouldn't be gone long. Though I know he'd sleep for a couple of hours, I just felt I had to make it quick and get back.
I juggled the tripod and umbrella and climbed over a few rocks to find a pleasing scene.

I found a couple of spots and was happy that the heavy overcast sky allowed for exposures up to 1 second.

I probably could have spent hours wandering the length of the creek, and once I would have. I just didn't have it in me at the moment.
The umbrella worked out well for keeping the rain off the camera.
Yes, it was a pain, but now I could easily walk in the rain as long as I kept to wide open trails.

When I got home it was time to start to get ready for chores. I mentally counted who would have to leave before winter came on. I moved our pony, Little Richard to a new spot to graze.
I wanted the cattle to stay, at least those in the pasture. The bull had to go and it was up to me to make the arrangements.
It felt odd knowing that farm decisions were mine now.
The two donkey jacks had to leave too and possibly the young horse Rich calls 15. She has no purpose other than eating and I don't have the desire to retrain her.
Half of me wants to keep Sundance and the half wonders if I'll have the time to work with her.

I count the bales of hay and figure on when we'll need to get some more. I mentally try to calculate if I have enough time to send the truck in for a tune up.

I stop back in the house. Rich is sitting on the edge of the couch. I stood there for a moment and he looked at me with wide innocent eyes.

"Do you no longer want to help with chores?" I asked.
He seemed perplexed by the question.
"Do you even think about chores any more?"
He shrugged and answered, "No not really I just was staring at the screen and watching..." his hand pointed to the small flat screen where he was watching Netflix.

I realized that he just isn't aware of the chores anymore. He knows they have to be done. But his mind doesn't trigger a response to get up and go outside.
This is the new normal.

He isn't being mean, he isn't ignoring me, he just is in this new foggy place.

I reach down and hug him. He puts his arms around me and hugs tightly back.

This is okay. I like the hugs. His love is still true and he smiles.

Just another rainy day.

Bugs and Slugs

Sometimes it just takes some kids to put things in perspective.

Kid goats.

Kids with fungi.

Looking for bugs.

A jaunt through the woods with kid goats and kids.

Hunt for fungi.

And find some very cool slugs.

Laughter, slugs, and bugs with a bit of Fungi tossed in.

Thank you neighbors for an awesome day.

Sole Searching

Gotcha!

But I couldn't help think that when I found this sole from an old boot in the creek today.

We had flash flooding again this past week and I went down today to look around and well, ... just get a bit lost in nature after the hectic week I've had.

This 'sole' is familiar, I've seen it further up the creek in years past. So I thought it quite funny to find that it had moved with the flash flood to another area of the creek.  I think in all it has moved about 250 feet with this summer's floods.

Some things move great distances. Not this rubber sole.

I really went searching for cool fungi. Of course if you search for something, sometimes you cannot find it. So I quit looking and decided to just climb rocks in the big wash and enjoy the peace of the woods.

The little creek itself was pretty amazing. The water was so clear.

I'd seriously think about this as a wading spot to cool off if it gets hot again.

It just seems so inviting.

No, I did not bring Morris along on this little walk. We've had a pair of wolves sited near by. I'm not in fear for Morris, but if I am super distracted I don't keep track of him and ... well... I was afraid that I'd be distracted quite a bit on this little hike.

I guess I didn't want to worry about him. I'd been personally a bit stressed over a few things and wanted to do the 'chill out' thing.

That is exactly what I ended up doing. I followed the deer trail to the end of the property then decided to take the 'dry run' back down to the creek.
I took my time and didn't consult my watch.

Imagine my delight when I saw "NO Service" on my cell phone. I was happy then.

The coyotes are pretty active right now and I found quite a few of their tracks. I admire their stealth and cunning. Some farmers around here have had a lot of trouble with coyotes.
Our Dexter cattle don't seem to be intimidated by them. Especially the horned moms.
They will chase down a strange dog in their pasture and try to gore them.

[They are used to Morris...no worries there..] They are small but they are tough!

Valerie has some awesome horns, and she is not shy about using them.  That is a plus and a minus. But I'd rather her be aggressive with dogs than let them attack.

Anyway...

I went rock walking. Not really climbing, just rock walking.

The flash flooding cleaned out this section of the dry run very nicely. I spent quite a bit of time here just enjoying the sounds of the forest above me and the noise of the water still trickling down through the rocks from the ridge above me.

...Same rocks just a different camera angle.

I really liked it here and I think I spent a lot of time just sitting and daydreaming.

I eventually decided to climb the rest of the way down and head towards home.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that I'd been wandering...daydreaming...for over 3 hours.

I however did find a lot of slugs. And I found some orange colored lichen. I thought this was my prettiest find of the day.
It wasn't fungi. It was the Slug Fest.