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.