Plants and Zentangles

The month of August was rainy here on the mountain and there were multitudes of mushrooms growing everywhere! Every day was a new adventure walking in the woods here. Later I'll show you what the fuschia mushroom looked like after it grew, but for now I want to show you a bit of the huge colony of orange mushrooms that were across the road. I counted over 25 in one clump and several others nearby! The last colony of these we saw were growing out of a tree stump, but these were growing from the ground. This photo is of the little clump, I love to get close-ups because the dew drops turn orange:

Last year I took photos of a strange almost ethereal plant that I assumed was a mushroom, then thought nothing more of it. That is, until this summer when Cheri mentioned that it might be the rare plant, Indian Pipe. I found the photo, sent it to here, and sure enough, it was the Indian Pipe. The photo didn't show enough of the surrounding area to be able to pinpoint where the plant was which was disappointing, but I did find, a little while later, another colony growing close to the house across the road. I flagged it, watched it turn black and forgot about it. THEN, Cheri and I took a nature walk in the woods behind the house and found two more dead colonies......but wait, there's more! A week or so ago I found 3 more colonies at the front end of our street, in one area there were 2 new shoots just emerging from the ground! So we took photos. When I returned to check them out 2 days later an animal must have thought the shoots were tasty, they were sheered off at the ground level. The established plants were fine. A few days later I found several more colonies, all in different growth stages, actually on the property. It will be interesting to see if they grow in the same spot or not next year. They may be rare, but not near my property!

This is one of the new shoots that was eaten:

This colony is fairly new, as they age the flowers and stalks begin to turn black. You can see a little of that happening on the edge of the lower right flower. They have a pinkish hue to them which is gorgeous!

And finally, my newest obsession is Zentangling! I found several blogs and sites that give great directions for tangles. I even watched a couple of videos at the official Zentangle site. I've been practicing every tangle and found that even though I almost skip some of them, they really are fairly simple to create. This is my first actual Zentangle using some of my favorite tangles and one I even created myself! Every night I end up doodling for almost an hour, the time flies. I have a couple of ideas to create in mind, but I need to become much better at Zentangling and work on my shading.