Nature: Bronzed and Glowing

Where are the leprechauns?!

I had an interesting week (as usual), which included walking among a profusion of huge mushrooms in a local park, grown overlarge thanks to springs' watery bounty, picking up a few beautiful objects for my personal perusal (now part of my natural collection), and having an animal encounter of the closest kind. Let's begin, shall we?

Hmm...maybe behind these toadstools?

First up: a absolutely shining, beautiful collection of perfectly bronzed mushrooms, flourishing in the springtime sun and remaining rather unmolested by human disturbance. It looked like a leprechaun's fairy tale home, or maybe the tiny abodes of some quick and unseen sprites, hiding behind a stand of trees and looking at me from afar.

Whoa! The is one HUGE mushroom!

A few specimens were of the largest kind that I can't remember seeing before, and which I'm attributing to our rather profuse rainfall. I dabbled in mycology last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/mushrooms.html), but concluded (after closely examining a few specimens on my mom's kitchen table), that foraging for cooking would be best done under the watchful eyes of an experienced, licensed guide. I don't want a bad trip, the worst trip being my untimely death, but I did really want to keep a few.

Hey! Who took a bite?

The other plants grew with equal veracity, as this fairy circle attests to. I mean, honestly, those fairies need to be less obvious when creating their homes with secret entrances growing in the ground.

A rather obvious fairy circle. Can you see it?

For scale, I got a picture of a fly resting on the trunk of one such monstrous 'shroom. Good Lord! Look at it! The next day, sadly, it was gone, harvested by a braver soul than me, surely. I hope it tasted good, or at least provided some fun and harmless recreational amusement.

For scale: fly on "Mushroom Monster".

Another beauty is this perfect robin's eggshell, so unique in it's representation of a color that we still refer to it as "Eggshell Blue", or "Robin's Eggshell Blue", as the shelves at your local paint store will surely attest to: a classic, timeless color.

A robin's eggshell at my fingertips.

While at the park, I took a rest after practicing some tai chi, when I noticed some motion below. Aha! An inchworm! Why, hello there "Inchie". It's the season for them to come out, releasing strands into the air, looking for something (or someone) to attach itself to.

Hard to capture on camera!

I played with it for awhile, picking it up on a stick, trying to capture an image for you to see. The funniest part was a trick of light that produced a halo effect around my new, tiny friend, not unlike those cute lil alien critters from that YA special The Host, by you-know-who (think Twilight series....shudder).

Glowy inchworm. Friend or alien foe?!

Another bronzed beauty in my path was the perfect leaf, shined by nature to a luster and sheen that a human would be hard pressed to capture on their own. So inspiring! As always, such beauty awaits us in the world, for all of us to see, for free.

Bronzed beauty.

Last, but not least, is the beautiful and also obvious to spot wild onion, which grows alongside a bevy of other edible beauties, like wild garlic, other types of onions and shoots, wild grapes, small sour crabapples, you name it. There's so much to harvest around here, that I'm glad I still remember my country ramblings as a kid; the familiar alongside the extraordinary, a type of every day magic that I realize is so rare, I'm still awed by it as an adult.

Wild onion.

I hope your week is as fruitful as mine, even if it's "just" the humble country walk. You never what (or who) you may find out there in the world. Happy Trails to you!

Me? I gotta have park.