OmegaMom

Shoes, ships, ceiling wax, cabbages, kings.  Etc.

Thanks for the nice comments about my mushroom pics!  I like them, and just wanted to share.

One of the comments was from John, at AdopteeNetwork, which is a new social networking site for adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents.  Of course, I checked it out before approving the comment, and it looks pretty neat.  John and his brother Peter, both adopted from Korea, have been absorbed by the ins and outs of adoption for many years.  If you check out the forum there and you’re a regular adoption blog reader, you may recognize some of the handles.  Looks like it’s brand new–like maybe two weeks?  Go check it out.

PretZel very sweetly awarded me this:

She likes my moose stories, apparently.  I blush.  Go read Prez’s latest post about dealing with a L.A.Z.Y. Teen, and console her in her travails.  In the meantime, I have to think up 7 blogs to pass the award onto.

Miss Cellania also passed on an award to me, the Arte y Pico award:

She did it so long ago (July 9) that I had to scroll through–holy moly!–nine pages of entries to find that one!  She has fun with her blog, also writes for Neatorama and a few other places, and actually makes a living blogging.  AND she’s raising two kids as a single mom.  I don’t know how she does it.  Anyway, I have to pass on the Arte y Pico award to 5 bloggers.

Any time I think that infertility sort of made me crazy for a while, I encounter a story like this, and realize, “Hey! I wasn’t that crazy!”  The worst of it is that this woman was charged and convicted of the same thing in 1990.  That is some crazy.  Really.

Then, just as lagniappe, I come across this article about the devastation from the pine bark beetle in Colorado.  Not to toot my own horn, but, hey, didn’t I write about this almost two years ago?!  How on earth can it take the mainstream media two years to catch onto something???

I will do the awards-passing-on tomorrow or the next day–this post is a quick round-up and the dotter is about to go to bed.

So sue me.  I’m fascinated by the mushrooms, by the wild variety, by how pretty they are, by where they grow, by how quickly they appeared after we got some serious moisture.  OmegaDad and I spent Sunday cleaning out the Massive Pile O’ Rotten Scrap Wood out from behind the stable.  OmegaDad would drag out a piece of old, water soaked lumber, turn to fling it onto the “have OmegaMom stand on the wood on top of an old tire so I can saw it in half so it will go into the dumpster” staging area, glimpse a mushroom, and call out, “Wow!  Here’s a grand one for your blog!”

Thus, in between flinging sodden lumber into the wheelbarrow, wheeling the barrow down to the dumpster, flinging sodden lumber into the dumpster, and wheeling the barrow back up to the stable-now-a-coop, I kept grabbing the camera and taking snaps.

Here we have a very phallic ’shroom.  Dig the hairy fibers in the middle and the neat black, oozy gills down below:

Using MushroomExpert.Com, my guess is that this is a “Shaggy Mane“.

The one below has the typical bright colors that scream out “DON’T EAT ME!!!”.  That would be because it’s an Amanita, well-known for being…um…not good to eat.  In fact, all amanitas tend to be poisonous.  (I like the highlighted, bolded comment, “You are stupid if you eat this mushroom” in the article.  Apparently there’s a coterie of folks who do eat this mushroom, looking for cheap psychedelic thrills.  And then they end up in the emergency room.)

I don’t know what these little dainties are, but they were just cute as…well, buttons!  (While wandering through the mushroom guide, I came across something that indicated it might not be a good idea to pop any old small, brown mushroom into your mouth.  I can assure all my readers that I am not planning to eat any of these ’shrooms, just admiring them.)  Note the bug on the cap at the top of the picture.

This is what they look like opened up:

This guy is a more aged version of one of the mushrooms in my previous post:

This guy was inside a stump; he looks quite leathery and not tender at all!

I’m sure you’re all tired of mushroom pictures.  But, honestly, I’m finding them fascinating and beautiful.  At the very least, it’s a pleasant reward for lots of rain and lots of grey days.  (The local newspaper has been running stories all about how everyone in the area is sick and tired of cold, grey, sometimes rainy days.  The article I last read pretty much said, straight out, that the local populace had been “spoiled” by 2004, 2005, and maybe 2006, which were, apparently, bright, sunny and warm.  Damn.  I’d like some of that.)