This Sunday we went to Hammond Pond Reservation not on a rainy day, but instead on one of the most beautiful New England days possible. I need to do more of this. It's good for me. This was a medium sized gilled mushroom (lbm). I didn't expect the texture that turned up on the macro. Charlie and I paused among the yellow-carpeted puddingstone boulders to soak it all in. Probably an...

We went to the Breakheart Reservation in Saugus/Wakefield. We were surprised at the number of colorful mushrooms out there today! There were lots of these pale yellow Amanitas . Possibly in the phalloides section? Same mushroom, dug out to show the clublike volva. Don't eat this one, whatever you do. Coral-like shapes in mushrooms have evolved at least four different times. ...

For whatever reason, I'm going through old journal entries. You know, I used to write a lot more. I even apologized for posting photographs. I've been on livejournal for six years, and I've recently considered jumping ship, but I'll stick around for a bit--call it continuity, call it inertia. Shall I take you with me on my trip to my past? October 7th 2003 (I didn't post daily for the first few...

Still learning the new lens. These are from last Sunday. I had a breakthrough today which would have made shooting these tiny mushrooms much more effective (hint: manual focus macro). These guys were only 4 or 5 cm tall. Here's Alexis caught in the act of getting a much better picture of the same caterpillar.

I recently got a new lens for the new camera. It's a Sigma 28-80AF zoom with macro focusing ability. I haven't taken any really good Muddy River pics with it, so I thought I'd experiment with it on yesterday's walk at the Lost Pond Reservation. Pokeberries are fruiting, so my first picture was a shameless steal from one of Alexis' recent pictures . One of the things I instantly don't like...

Congratulations to this week's winners! malixe First Place kitchenbeard Second Place (tie) babelkot Second Place (tie) cottonmanifesto Second Place (tie) arcata1 Third Place (tie) hits_ofsunshine Third Place (tie) This week's theme starts now - "Saint" Next week's theme will be... "Ancillary"

Fishing Spider Dolomedes sp. Honeybee Apis mellifera pollinating swamp loosestrife Decodon verticillatus . (Thanks to cottonmanifesto for assisting in the identification. I thought it was purple loosestrife .) Charlie has gray hairs in his eyebrows now. He'll be 9 in October.

One of the wonderful things about living in Massachusetts is the strong ethic of preserving green spaces and even the creation of new parks. I found out from the Boston Birders yahoo group about a park called "Skyline Park" in Brookline. It's a capped landfill, like Spectacle Island , and the land in Hamilton I visited for work a few years back. It just opened this year, and it has the appearance...

It's morning, I'm drinking coffee, and I'm on the computer. A bit of a ritual. McKinley stayed home from school today---yesterday when he came home from school he was complaining of being worn out and sore. I thought we'd take no chances today. Dose him up on Vitamin C, and let him work with his Dad on an Aquaponics project. Yes, my husband wants to grow fish, and came home last night with a bag...

Morning rain has cleared to Monday sunshine. This means the garden is sated and readying itself for blooming, and also that the forest will be thicker and wet when I hike up into it presently. It's been a wild weekend of Herb Festing (which will get its own post shortly) and family visiting. Lots of traveling. So I am glad for Monday and the stillness it offers. This is ironic, of course, because...