I did take my long awaited walk in the woods the other day. I hadn’t been yet this summer and mostly because of the ticks. We’ve had mosquitoes too this year, which we haven’t had since we moved here. This year they’re bad! So, I sprayed myself down with Deep Woods OFF! and off I went. I contemplated taking one of the dogs with me but I knew in my heart they would not appreciate all the stopping I was hopefully going to do when I saw something to take a photo of.

A leaf decoupaged onto another from the heavy rain the other day.

The woods are lusher than normal this year with all the rain we’ve had. It was even hard to find the beginning of the trail it’s so overgrown. No thorns reached out to clutch at my clothing as I entered the forest as they have done in previous times. I can’t describe it, but the woods have a different feel to them. Almost more secretive.

The trail was boggy and wet and I came across many pools of standing water. At this point I was glad I decided not to bring a dog!

Of course, all this wetness means that it’s just the right kind of conditions for mushrooms to thrive. I found they came in all colors.

Bright orange.

Yellow.

A combination of colors.

Purple. (!)

Some were huge. These were bigger than they look. My hand could not span the top of these.

Some were ugly.

Some grew on trees.

Some were brown but interesting all the same.

Some had me fooled. (do you know why?) Look closely.

While others didn’t look like mushrooms at all. This one looks like it’s trying to disguise itself by looking like the surrounding mulch.

And this one. Well, anybody for a cheese pizza?

Remember the coral mushroom I showed you the other day? Seems they come in different colors too. Yellow and this lovely peachy color.

I didn’t take just photos of mushrooms. A few blooming things along the way caught my eye.

I walked all the way down to the pond which had a lot of visitors for the middle of the day during the week. An elderly man that was fishing commented to me that it was a nice spot for taking photographs, and asked me what I was taking photos of. When I told him mostly mushrooms he cocked his head, raised one eyebrow and said “Kinda strange, don’t you think?” I told him I didn’t think it was strange at all. I’m sure most of the people I passed on my photographic journey walked right past all those mushrooms and didn’t even see them. Admit, it: aren’t you glad I pointed them out to you?