Wednesday, August 19, 2009

It's Forever Raining Fungi

Summer in Tennessee is know for being hot and muggy, but this summer has seemed much damper than normal. Mr. Bookworm blames that fact on El Nino, which The Weather Channel insists has returned this year. I nod distractedly and return to watching the rain. When I venture outside, as infrequently as that may be due to the nasty weather and my skin deciding to suddenly become allergic to nature, I have noted a strange change in our vegetation that looks like this:


And this:


And this:

Our back yard and the woods surrounding our house has been infested by mushrooms of all types. I started chronicling our fungi explosion because there were so many in one place at one time, and some of them were kind of cute in that puffy golf ball growing out of the ground way.
Now that the rain has ceased a bit, our mushrooms have taken a more malevolent appearance:



I firmly believe that this fungus would like to eat small animals if provoked. Perhaps it might lead a take over of the planet. Fortunately we have Super Mario Brothers' mushroom to protect us (and its friend the cute toadstool that ran away from Fairyland):
And by the way, if anyone knows what any of these things are, I would love to know what oddities I have growing in my yard!

2 comments:

Rebekah said...

I don't know much about fungi, but I have noticed that they've been a lot more plentiful this year. I see them everywhere and we have to keep a close eye on Ginny when she goes out to play because she *loves* to pick them. Yikes!

Mary said...

I'm glad to know we don't just have a weird piece of land that inhabited by these weird things! Good luck keeping Ginny out of them, especially if you have as many was we do. :)