mossy wonderlands

i know with the states in the throes of an extreme cold snap, it seems a little out of place to complain about mild temperatures (our forecast high for tomorrow is 10°C/50°F) , but i really think we could use a bit of winter. however, yesterday afternoon, when i went down to the forest to help husband load up a bunch of firewood he'd been working on, i was happy to have my camera along and happy the landscape wasn't covered in snow, because it meant these amazing little mossy wonderlands were there to see if you were willing to get down on the ground with your macro lens. i find them to be such impossibly magical little architectural constructions, it seems strange that they are plants. i do often wonder if i've just scared away the fairies or perhaps a pixie or two, but i never seem to catch sight of any, to my eternal disappointment.

if a tree falls in the forest...

...does it make a sound?

a big storm blew through late yesterday afternoon. high winds and driving rain accompanied it. there were branches down on the road here and there and we decided to check our forest today. to our surprise, there was a wide swath of downed trees. i tried to count, but stopped at 35. there are probably at least 50 and it's a clear path, like a tornado went through, even tho' otherwise conditions weren't as we know them for tornadoes in the midwest of the US (instead of hot and humid, it was rather chilly and no lightning and thunder seemed to accompany the storm).

what i wonder is how we didn't hear all those trees crashing down, even tho' we're a kilometer or so away from our forest. it must have made quite a racket.

mushroom monday

all of the mushrooms in this post were seen and photographed on a single walk in the woods.

our property is 7+ hectars (17 acres) of land, divided into two - one of about 4 hectars where the house is and the other piece is a forest of mostly birches, but quite a few big pines, about 2 km down the road.

these mushrooms were all growing in our forest on saturday. so i guess the rain is good for something.

and what is it about a sense of ownership (tho' by rights, it's the bank that owns it) that somehow makes it even better?

are we programmed by our culture to think ownership adds an extra dimension?

or is it programmed in our very genetic makeup? a biology of ownership?

i don't have the answer.

but i will say that i felt these mushrooms, in their variety and number, were extra special because we found them in our own forest.

so they were OUR infinite variety of mushrooms. and that somehow adds an extra dimension.

i'd like to learn more about mushrooms. i mostly photographed them, tho' we brought a few home to try to identify them with our various mushroom books. (someone needs to invent one that lets you look things up by color.)

we're mostly too chicken to get very adventurous on eating just any old mushroom. which is probably also a biology of sorts - self-preservation.

so mostly, we just enjoyed the beauty of them.

and i enjoyed getting on the ground and getting up close and personal with the macro lens. devouring them with the camera, if not actually devouring them.

tho' these yellow swamp brittlegills are edible and we found enough of them (that we didn't have to share with bugs and slugs) to make an accompaniment to our pasta dinner.

they have the additional advantage of being difficult to mix up with other mushrooms,

so you can feel safe and secure in identifying them by their bright yellow tops.

they were delicious.

into the woods

we went for a walk down in our forest today.
it's a bit swampy in spots.
but mostly, it's deeply quiet.
alive and primeval in its silence.
timeless.
secure.
photosynthesizing.
and oh so very green.
i have this sense that it is enormously patient.
it has been here for years
and will continue long after we're gone.
there's something magical about that.