Nature Study

I travel down this road every day to get the kids from school, and there's this trailhead looking kiosk thingie(for lack of a better term) off to the right, across from a playground and basketball courts.  It's a beautiful canopy road that I thoroughly enjoy every day.  Of course right now, in the dead of winter, everything is so green because of all the rain we have had recently.  I't been a very wet winter here!  Anyhow, I have often wondered about the kiosk looking thingie and wondered if it really meant a trail?  Today, with the kids, I have quelled the desire to find out about this interesting side of the road.  It is not a trailhead, at least not anymore...  but we did find some intriguing nature!  Like this resurrection fern, it went clear to the top of this tree, and was so verdant and lush!

It's called that because when it is dry, the fern looks all brown and dead, but then when the rain comes and it gets wet, it resurrects and comes back to life! Such a cool thing God did with that! 

The kids were dissapointed that there was no trail, as was I, but we traipsed around the area anyhow and found all kinds of neat fungus.

The ones to the left look like little fairy steps and were silvery, and the ones to the right were moist and wiggly like jello and were a pretty reddish/brown.

 

This was over what looked like an abandoned gopher tortise hole. 

These cute little mushrooms look like little fairy unbrellas, I wonder if they used them yesterday?  I especially like the one on the top, reaching out from the underside of the log. 

Some more resurrection fern and some moss on a fallen branch.

...and right close to that branch, was this branch that had this fungus growing on it.  I don't know if you can see the tiny black feather-like growth around the edges of it.  So neat!

We crossed back over the street and went to the playground.  While the kids were playing, I spotted this tiny mushroom in the leaves.  Just as we were leaving we spotted these on a tree by the entrance to the playground, somebody had kicked some of them off, but left enough for us to enjoy.  The undersides resemble stalagtites on the inside of a cave don't they?

 It only took us about 30 minutes total and we probably could have stayed longer!  Hmmmm, me thinks we'll be stopping by some other areas I've been wanting to explore!

Inspiration:  http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/