Tag: mushroom

I Could Turn Left Rather Than Right

What could you do differently?

I think I already answered a version of this question so I’m going in a different direction with it. Ha ha. Direction. I mean, there’s a sh** ton I could do differently, and I’ve written about that enough.

Instead, let’s take a walk, but differently. Today I turned left rather than right when I left our driveway on my daily nature walk. Whoa.

First, I saw this tiny spider.

I’d been wanting to walk the other way down our road past our property line for a while, because there are some empty fields and mottes of trees where I’ve heard interesting birds while I was busy doing horse control at Sara’s place.

Looks boring, but birds like it.

So, off I went. First I had to enjoy the horses, who were lounging around after playing in the burs (mostly Drew). They’re so cute when they lie down. I do wish they then wouldn’t grind mud into their coats, but they ARE horses.

Horses at peace.

As for birds, I was glad I brought my binoculars, because I got to get a good look at our resident American Kestrel and see it fly with the sun shining through its feathers.

Certainly it isn’t exciting in a photo.

The sun was so bright today that things were hard to see, but I was rewarded by seeing sun dogs in the clouds on either side of it for a while. Perfect cloud placement.

I saw a lot of woodpeckers, vultures, hawks, and caracaras. I also noticed that all the doves I saw were Eurasian Collared Doves, not the Mourning Doves I see at my house right down the road. Binoculars helped with that.

Caracaras in the distance.

I heard both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks, which is cool, but I didn’t see anything new other than a White-breasted Nuthatch. I thought I’d see. One before, but I guess not.

I’m glad I took the walk in this direction, because I got to visit with Sara and look at her permaculture garden progress. Of course, for me the highlight was getting to visit with Jhayati, who is 8 months old now. She’s a beautiful filly and has such a striking face. I sure look forward to watching her grow.

Big Baby Jhayati.

After I saw her, I saw one more mockingbird then no more birds at all. Do they have clocks? They shut up at 11am.

I only have an internal clock.

Luckily there was still something interesting to see. I saw what looked like eggs on the ground where hay bales recently were. It was the eruption of the most cool mushroom we have here, the Lizard’s Claw Stinkhorn Lysurus cruciatus.

Stinkhorn!

Interesting note: I posted photos of this on The Hermits’ Rest Facebook page, which is public, and suddenly weird replies from so-called people trying to promote psychedelic mushrooms popped up, repeatedly. Sigh. Lots to block. This mushroom just stinks. I didn’t see anything about it being psychedelic, but I’m now glad I didn’t lick it.

What iNat says.

Penney says she’d lick it for me.

Armadillo Encounter!

It’s been a good couple of days in the Austin neighborhood. The weather is so nice that we’re able to be out a bit more. So, we see things. On top of that, we meet people. Here’s what and who I have seen and met in the last 24 hours.

I thought I’d share the progress of our yucca bloom. I think it makes a really pretty pattern.

I met a charming pre-teen youth yesterday who was running sprints back and forth between two mailboxes, and doing push-ups in between. I was trying to leave him alone, but Vlassic loved him, so we chatted. I asked him what he was training for, and he puffed himself up to full height (shorter than me, I think), and informed me he was the starting quarterback at his middle school team, and he had to keep in shape to keep his position. “We play tackle!” he happily informed me. I told him he was showing all the signs of someone who has sports success, and he just beamed at me.

Continue reading “Armadillo Encounter!”