Scienteriffic

This is a shaggy mane mushrooms, on the lawn at Moo's place. A bunch of them appeared overnight after it rained.

You can eat this mushroom; it has a fishlike texture (but not taste) due to its many delicate gills. I didn't cook any of them up though on the off chance I could die. What's neat about the shaggy mane is that it undergoes autolysis -- which means it digests itself! That's what these fellows are doing, and very prettily, don't you think? In olden times (hee hee) people used the ink from this process to write with.

I couldn't figure out what kind of mushroom this was; it was made up of a bunch of individual mushrooms clumped together and it looked like doggie diarrhea or maybe frat boy throw-up. Oddly enough, it wasn't slimy or soft at all; it was more spongy.



On our way back from Sunday brunch we finally stopped by the wildlife sanctuary near Moo's. It was snow geese migration time and there were many bird geeks there with spotting scopes and binoculars. I warned Moo to be careful about asking questions as I was once trapped by a BG at a hawk migration. BG's wait all year for stuff like this because it's the one time someone will actually listen to them yammer on and believe you me, they are just FULL of information.

This is a pretty apple tree on the front lawn at Moo's; she and I sat near it on Sunday morning while I drank coffee and she read me the sports pages for women. I brought a sample apple to the apple guy at the farmer's market near my house; he said they're some heirloom russet variety.



These are black walnuts from a tree by Moo's door; note how many stages it takes to get to nut-meat. Also note that nut-meat is a dirty-sounding word.



And finally, in the slate stones leading to the house of the retired rich NY-ers whose garage Moo lives over is one of many fossils I found when I was taking the black walnut pictures.

Moo said I would make a good home-school teacher but it's been my experience that home-schooled children are wussy freaks so while I will be happy to teach any future children I may have about the wonders of nature, they're going to have to go to regular school, too, so as not to turn out any stranger than nine long months of growing in my womb followed by 18 years of living with me is going to make them.