Mushrooms

Another mushroom picture that evokes a quote! Do you know who Harriet Tubman was? From Wiki: Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made more than thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. If you would like to read more about this remarkable woman, Wiki's article is great: Wiki: Harriet Tubman Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

Our lower forest has two different areas. One area is more open and lets in much more light. The other part is darker and stays wetter, and thus, is a haven for mushrooms! As I was walking around one day, I looked down and discovered a whole colony of beautiful white mushrooms growing up through the fallen leaves. This one was about 1/2 an inch tall! :)

You never know what you'll find when you walk quietly in a meadow. On a wet and rainy morning, you might just find a mushroom enjoying the beautiful day and thinking about the words of great philosophers. I heard him whispter this as I quietly took my picture and passed by, "Wisdom begins in wonder." ~ Socrates By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :) (I've been very busy with my current graphic design project but I'm planning to visit as many of you as I can today!)

This mushroom stood in front of his big family, old and proud. The life of a mushroom is only a few days, and in that time it must grow and then disperse its spores before fading away. That's a lot of work for a little mushroom, and this one is clearly very tired and ready to rest back in the earth where he came from! If you'd like more information about mushrooms, I found a very nice site here! www.allaboutmushrooms.com/

It's always wonderful to get a shot of a mushroom when you can see the gills, but did you know that not all mushrooms have them? Gills are just one way that mushrooms disperse their spores, which are kind of like seeds. Mushrooms also release spores via pores, teeth, through pressurized holes, they drop to the ground, and there are other methods too! If you would like to know more about the way mushrooms release their spores, take a look at this page: Mushroom Spore Dispersion

Sometimes a picture is just perfect for a quote. This wonderful little mushroom seems to be stretching for the heavens and reaching for its dreams. All that from a little guy only 1/2" tall! :) By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

The other day I was looking for mushrooms when I happened to find these two laughing and playing together. I asked them if I could take their picture and they proudly hugged close for a perfect picture of two best friends! :D

Look at all those mushrooms!!! I discovered them before they reached the house! :D There were dozens on this branch and I took lots of pictures, but this one turned out the best I think. It's just incredible how many mushrooms are growing right now!

This is another view of the first mushroom I found this fall. I managed to get two pictures that I thought turned out very well, and yet, quite different. I hope you like it!

What a special mushroom this is! I found it the other day when walking the dogs, and this one is about 5" tall! There are at least 6 there, gathered in a semi-circle around a brush pile! And if you think this one is big, there's one twice as large! Incredible!

Can you believe this?! This pair of tiny mushrooms are joined at the base! I couldn't believe how cute they look together, bravely holding onto one another like two little kids, so curious to see what the strange creature is who's smiling down at them! I've been working on a cool new graphic design project and it's been keeping me really busy, but I wanted to share this cute picture with all of you! And guess what?! I've infected my husband with Fungus Frenzy!! :D I went up to our ridgeline a few days ago to look for mushrooms and to my amazement, I had to watch where I was putting my feet because there were countless mushrooms EVERYWHERE!! I spent several hours taking pictures and had to stop because it was getting dark. After showing Steve some of my images, he got so excited that we went up there together yesterday so he could take some pictures too! To tell you how many mushrooms there were, we walked about 30 feet away from the top of the ridge and he found so many different mushrooms that he spent 2 entire hours in an area of about 30 feet! We had our walkie-talkie's on and as I went for a walk, he kept checking in to tell me that he found more mushrooms! :D By the time it was getting dark, he still had dozens of mushrooms he didn't have time to photograph!! AMAZING!! Thank you so much for all of your comments, favorites and patience while I'm busy! I'll stop by to say hello as soon as I can! :D *big hugs to all of you!*

This mushroom must have been a 30's movie star with that soft blur showcasing its big, toothy expression! (What do you think... Jean Harlow Mushroom ? )

No larger than the bed of moss it's growing in, this tiny mushroom is reaching proudly for the sky! Did you know... Mushrooms have no chlorophyll (a green pigment in plants), so they don't need sunshine to grow and thrive. Some of the earliest commercial mushroom farms were actually set up in caves in France during the reign of King Louis XIV (1638-1715). If you would like to know more interesting facts about mushrooms, you can visit this page: Mind-boggling Facts About Mushrooms By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)

Sometimes it's difficult to figure out the best angle to show off a subject. With mushrooms, I'm always trying to show the gills underneath, but it wasn't possible with this one. Also, this one's most special feature was its stripey top, so I did my best to show it off in three different views.

A tiny mushroom peeking out from some moss.

Here is a pair of white mushrooms, cuddling close together on the forest floor. There were dozens upon dozens of these ghostly fungi popping up through the leaves, what fun to find them!

This tiny mushroom measures only about 1/4" tall, and it wasn't until I saw the pictures on my computer that I noticed that he has a face!!* He seems to be terrified of me, but I guess I'd be scared too, if a giant leaned down with a black thing and made strange cooing noises at me! This picture is from the set I took the other day and as I predicted, I have dozens to share! I'm so happy that my experiments with high ISO in low light have worked out so well. It means I can get still get nice pictures without a flash, even with ISO over 1000! :) * I didn't add anything to make that face!! The only thing I did was use a filter that brings in a bit of detail. I have one more pictures today which I hope you'll visit too! :) Thank you all for your visits and comments! I am swamped with work but hope to have a few minutes here and there to visit, as I miss you all very much and want to see what you've been posting!!

Mushroom hunting the other day was so much fun! I got hundreds of pictures of dozens of different mushrooms and in the end I'll have just over 30 different mushroom pictures to share from just one day!! What a success! Here we have a beautiful family peering out at me from the side of a log. The largest one seems to be protectively shielding them from danger as they stare out at the strange creature cooing at them in adoration. This photoshoot was also an experiment. My Canon 5D Mk II performs very nicely in low-light conditions and I wanted to see if I could get nice results from very high ISO by using Topaz DeNoise. I'm really happy to report that it's been a great success, so I'll be showing pictures from my day's fungus festivities for quite a while! :D By the way, I've uploaded two other pictures today and I hope you'll visit them too! Thanks to all of you who have visited and have left comments and favorites! I try to go to all of your pages within a day or two and is a highlight for me to see your beautiful photography! :)