Fungus - Beautiful Polypores and Jelly and the Outdoor Hour Challenges Featuring Mushrooms

We always enjoy finding a beautiful fungus when we hike....yes, I said beautiful. They come in such interesting shapes and colors. There is no denying that the bracket fungus above is beautiful in its design.



Now identifying fungus with a specific name is not always easy for me so when I do learn a name it usually sticks. This fungus is called Witches' Butter.

If you live in California, this is a good website to bookmark:
California Fungus-Simple Key.



This one was truly unusual and I don't think we have seen it before on our hikes. It only lasted a few days and I am really glad we stopped to take some photos so we can remember the way it grows.




Here it is on another stump. At the bottom of the image you can see that something has knocked part of it off the stump and you can take a good look at the gills.




This one was just an interesting shape....don't have any idea what it is exactly but I can still appreciate the way it is part of the habitat and that it is just fun to look at as we stopped to observe it along our trail.

Here is a link to another fungus entry I wrote last year: The Joy of Fungus. In this entry I share some of notebook pages and a couple of interesting links for you to check out.

Also, you can check out two of the Outdoor Hour Challenges featuring mushrooms in the Handbook of Nature Study:

Outdoor Hour Challenge #41

Autumn Series #9 Mushrooms

Spring Gardens - Filled With Promise

Our Plum Tree - Leaves are coming on fast this week with the little sunshine we experienced. Plum jelly in the making.

I have started reading  An Oregon Cottage and she has a great gardening/home blog that hosts a Tuesday Garden Party meme.I thought this week I would join up and share with all of you what is going on in my garden right now as spring starts to burst forth.

My garden is definitely not a winter garden. I don't do much more than throw out a few lettuce and carrot seeds in the late fall and those have long been harvested. My boys planted snap peas this past autumn but some critter of the night came and munched them down to the ground. I accept that I live in a habitat that offers yummy treats to my fellow creatures so I took the peas in stride.

Our Walnut Tree - Perhaps the squirrels will leave us some this year. :)

I think the theme of this post is going to be the PROMISE of a summer garden and fall harvest since that is what I observed as I toured around yesterday.



Our garlic chives are starting to grow again...can't wait.



The oregano is filling in and hints at the summer pizza and sauces to come...of course, I had to nip a few leaves just to smell as I walked around the boxes.



My son's strawberry box is greening up nicely as well. We are going to be adding a new strawberry box as soon as we can get through mud to built it. (see the last photo for a photo of the location)



This should tell you how badly I need to tend to the garden after a long winter. These onions are popping up despite being mixed in with the mullein and the dusty miller. I know I am not going to get to this part of the garden for at least a couple of weeks....just being honest.



So as long as I'm being honest, here is what the state of most of our garden boxes at this very moment. Very sad and in need of a good weeding before we can even think about getting something new planted. The saddest part is that if I put my mind to it, I could have this tidied up in an afternoon.




Moving away from the vegetable garden and onto the flower boxes is a little bit more cheerful. The tulips are just beginning to give us a hint of their deep purple blooms to come. I love my little tulip patch and look forward to watercoloring the flowers once they start to really shine.



The chrysanthemums that I planted last year look like they made it through the winter nicely. I look forward to seeing their happy little faces in a few months. This box has coneflowers as well so this spot has flowers long into the autumn once it gets started. I decided a long time ago that I needed to include a couple of flower boxes along with the vegetables because it cheers me up to see the color when I look out the window. Food for the soul.



This wallflower has been a great plant in our garden for the last two years. I actually saw some bees buzzing in it too! Happy bees.



Here are some guys who came uninvited to my garden! My son spotted these whoppers in the back of the bed and of course I had to take a photo.

Now for the exciting part of the post!



See that fresh garden territory? I finally convinced my husband that this "lawn" was using up valuable garden space and very expensive water (rates just increased again!). We are trying out a few possible configurations to build some raised boxes with one center block bed to hold something artsy. Any ideas are welcome. It usually gets summer sun mid-morning to late afternoon so probably about six+ hours altogether.

So there ends my garden survey for this first week in the spring season. I am truly looking forward to the change of the season.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom




Jami's Tuesday Garden Party meme is open from Tuesday to Thursday so there is still time for you to jump in and participate!

Hiking On A Winter Day - California Style

We had the opportunity to hike down at the river, sunny skies and warmer temperatures were just too good to pass up. The Kona dog went swimming and brought us a bunch of sticks to throw for her to fetch. She was one happy dog!


This sign is for rafters, not hikers. There are stretches of the river that flow through "private" areas and you are not supposed to be loud and rowdy there but then when you hit public lands you can have water fights and swim and holler as much as you want. There were no rafters on the river this time but in the summer there is raft after raft of water lovers floating down this section of the river.


Hiking still means climbing on things for my teenage boys. This time it was an old oak tree lying on its side. It is a sad sight to see one of these old oaks giving in to the elements. I know it is home to creatures and soon it will melt into the floor of the woods but it still makes me sad.


Down at the river the boys made Andy Goldworthy style rock piles again but in the end my rock sculpture was the best.....


What do you think? At least it didn't fall over before I could take a photo....just friendly family competition/fun. It is not as easy at it looks to stack rocks, big and small, into something that looks nice.


Hiking back up from the river I spotted this little mushroom growing in the moss on the side of a tree.


Here is another one that we thought was interesting. My boys call me the Fungus Lady for a reason. :)

Seriously, our part of the world is not a winter wonderland but it can get cold. I decided that it is pleasantly warm enough afternoons that it makes our cold winter mornings bearable. I have never lived anywhere else and I just don't know how I would cope with really long, snowy winters. We have days at a time where it is cold and we get a few inches of snow but it melts and the sun comes out and we see green. Our green season is really from about this time of the year until the end of May.....they our state turns "golden".  I like "golden".

Shhhh...don't tell anyone. Barb is admitting that she doesn't care for winter as much as summer.

154 days until the first day of summer but I'm not counting.

I am going to have to postpone our winter snow study until we actually get some snow. We are working on our winter tree study though so stay tuned for that this week. We also took another fabulous hike to a different part of the river today...I know....we are spoiled but loving it.



Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Miscellaneous Nature Study Using The Outdoor Hour Challenges

#21 Notebook Challenge
#39 Weather Challenge #1
#40 Fall Seasonal Weather Challenge
#41 Flowerless Plants Overview
#42 Moss and Lichen
#43 Molds, Puffballs, Morels

Mushrooms (Autumn)

Spring Weather 
Winter Weather
The Winter World
Snow
November World
December World
Winter Sky and Stars 

Reptile Study - Snakes
Invertebrates - Earthworms
Invertebrates - Garden Snails (Spring Splendor)
Trout and Salmon 
Frogs 
Turtles and Pondweed (Summer Sizzle)

Salt Study 
Sand and Soil (Summer Sizzle)
Small Square Study (Winter)
Autumn Nature Journal - Field Notebook

December World - Texture

We had a break in our rainy weather so that meant we seized the opportunity to get out and walk with the dog on the walking trail. Our surprise nature study subject of the day was "mushrooms". They were in abundance on this trip down the trail.

After looking at all the photos when we got home, I decided the theme of the day was "texture".


Must be something rotting underneath the debris....makes for a great photo.



Lots of things going on in this photo...reds and greens make a nice contrast to each other.


This is my favorite image of the day....wow! Look all those textures and colors and layers.



Someone or something had knocked a bunch of mushrooms loose along another section of the trail. Love the gills in this mushroom image.


Last one for today....mushrooms and brown grass make an interesting composition for this image.

We are enjoying our winter break and spending lots of time outdoors, both in the yard and out on walks. I haven't had any nature study subjects in mind except to enjoy the pleasures that December has offered. I am sort of itching to get started on a more focused nature study plan again in January.

The Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges is available from last year on the sidebar of my blog if you are interested in working through those this year. I also am writing a complete set of notebook pages and compiling last year's Winter Wednesday challenges into an ebook with some updated information and links. I hope to have that book available to purchase by the end of the week. I am thinking if you completed the Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges last year, you can use the Winter Wednesday ebook this year with the notebook pages. You can look at the Winter Wednesday topics if you click the Winter tab at the top of my blog. I am writing the WW ebook in such a way that you DO NOT need the Discover Nature in Winter book to complete them, it is suggested but not necessary. This will cut your investment considerably since you really only need the ebook to complete all the WW challenges.

I hope that explains what I am up to for the winter season of nature study. Please feel free to email me if you have any confusion or any questions.

I am off to San Francisco today to spend the day looking at some great art....Post-Impressionists! Of course the museum is in Golden Gate Park so we will more than likely be taking a walk to see what we can find.

Have a great week!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Winter Cattails-Surprised Again!

We started our cattail study last fall with this entry: Cattails in Autumn.

We had two locations to visit for this study....one within walking distance and another up on our regular walking trail on the other side of town.

Here are the cattails near our house.

Our cattails are starting to look a little ragged. The water that was there in the fall has now completely dried up. The stalks of the cattails are dry, stiff, and hard. The leaves are stiff as well.


Here is our cattail area that is along our walking trail. I think that someone came and cut a lot of the actual cattails. Even thought they are still growing in water, the leaves and stems are all brown and stiff.


There is still a little water in this area that flows down to a creek. We all noticed that the water was a little smelly this time of year....hmmmm. We enjoyed having a purpose to our walk today and it was nice to focus on something other than the cold air. :)

The other interesting thing that we noted on this walk was that there were lots of mushrooms growing. Here are three different kinds that we stopped and looked at.


There were lots of this kind pushing up through the leaves.


There were some that were really white.


Then we saw this cute little yellow mushroom.

We are off to another hike today but this time down to the river. We will keep our eyes out for anything interesting.

Hope you get a chance to look for your cattails.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

The Joy of Fungus: Our Mushroom Study

We haven't had much of a chance to study mushrooms up close in the last few weeks but we did over our summer break. Our trip to Oregon gave us plenty to look at and identify. Identifying mushrooms is really a difficult task.


As part of our biology course, we studied the mushroom's life cycle and my boys made nature journal entries using some of the photos we had collected of mushrooms in our area.

"Fungi, as a whole, are a great boon to the world. Without them our forests would be choked out with dead wood. Decay is simply the process by which fungi and other organisms break down dead material, so that the major part of it returns to the air in gaseous form, and the remainder, now mostly humus, mingles with the soil." Handbook of Nature Study, page 715

I think if that is the only thing we learn about fungus/mushrooms from our study we will have accomplished a greater understanding of how the forest ecosystem works. There is great beauty in these living things and a wonderful purpose to their creation.

Our mushroom season will soon be upon us and we will be out and enjoying a whole array of fungus to observe. We will be using the diagram on page 717 to categorize the mushrooms we see as we go along. I am totally inspired by Casey's study: Extraordinary World: Mushrooms.

Here is a set of our mushroom photos from the last year that I gathered on Flickr if you would like to see what we have in our area of California: Mushrooms

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge Autumn Series-Mushrooms

Mushrooms! Fungus! Molds! Ask my children and they will tell you that I am fascinated with these things when we find them during our outdoor time. They even call me very affectionately the "Fungus Lady".

I found this video during our last study of mushrooms and I would love for you to watch it in order to prepare you for your study of mushrooms. This video is very well done and will help your children understand how a mushroom grows.

Planet Earth: Mushroom Madness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTvaxVySlE
You will need to click over to YouTube.com to view this video. Please note: Turn down the sound if the music is too much for you. As always, please preview the video on YouTube and I do not endorse any other video that may come up after this one. There are some questionable videos about mushrooms.

If you do not think you will observe any mushrooms during your Outdoor Time, you can still complete the Inside Preparation work as a way to be ready the next time you do see a mushroom.



Outdoor Hour Challenge
Autumn Series #9 Mushrooms
(Formerly Challenge #41)

Inside Preparation Work
Mushrooms and Other Fungi-read the overview starting on page 714 and continuing to page 719. Page 719 shows the parts of a mushroom with labels.

Outdoor Hour Time
The ideal study of ferns, mushrooms, and fungi would be to experience them outdoors in their natural habitat. Use your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time this week to enjoy a search for some kind of mushroom. Your particular area may not have these subjects readily at hand but let your friends, family, and neighbors know that you are studying mushrooms and with more pairs of eyes looking you may be able to find something to study up close.

Enjoy your time outdoors whether you can find this week’s subject or not. Remember to look at the sky and comment on the weather. Take time to notice your tree from your year long tree study. Collect a few items to take inside to sketch into your nature journal. Just because the topic of this challenge is mushrooms, you do not have to limit yourself to that narrow focus during your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time.

Follow-Up Activity
Spend a few minutes once inside to discuss your experiences from your nature walk. Are there questions that need to be answered or items that need to be identified? Make a note of any topics that come up that you can research further in the Handbook of Nature Study or at your local library.

Make an opportunity for a nature journal entry. The diagrams on pages 695 and 719 could be sketched into the nature journal. I have created a notebook page for you to use in your nature journal to record your mushroom observations and it is listed in the free downloads section of the sidebar of my blog.

“Since mushrooms are especially good subjects for watercolor and pencil studies, it would add much to the interest of the work if each pupil, or the school as a whole, should make a portfolio of sketches of all the species found. With each drawing there should be made on a supplementary sheet a spore print of the species.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 718

Spore prints are another idea for an activity following up the mushroom study. I would only do this activity with older students who truly understand that mushrooms can be poisonous.
Here are some instructions you can download: Mushroom Spore Prints or this blog entry.


You can use the provided notebook page to sketch a mushroom that you observed during your Outdoor Time or you can use it to copy the sketch from page 719 in the Handbook of Nature Study, labeling the different parts of a mushroom.

Do not forget that you can always catch up on the Autumn Series Challenges over on my Squidoo Lens. I periodically add additional resources and suggestions for related art and music study using the Squidoo Lens.

Make sure to come back to this post and share your link on Mr. Linky. The Outdoor Hour Community is very good at coming over to check out your study.....don't forget to read everyone else's entries and leave them a word of encouragement.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Wetland Day-Great Egrets

I know that large parts of the United States are under frozen temps and lots of ice so I almost feel guilty posting my photos from our hike yesterday. It was very sunny but the wind was brisk and we took advantage of the afternoon to look into a wetland that is about an hour from our home. This wildlife area is home to lots of migratory birds and is on the Pacific Flyway.

There were many kinds of ducks and geese but some other more exciting birds as well. We watched a pair of hawks soaring and diving for a long time and then we came across this beauty of a bird....a Great Egret.


We observed many Great Egrets. This particular bird was posing for the longest time for us and we got a very good look at his beautiful fluffy feathers. (Go ahead, click the photo to get a better look.)

I tried to get a photo of one in flight and this was the best I could do, if you click the photo you will see it much better. They dangle their feet out behind them as they fly and their wings have a wingspan of about 50 inches.


We also enjoyed the wildflowers that were in bloom.....mostly mustard and this white flower that I am not sure about.


My son spotted these huge mushrooms along the road.


It was nice to get out into the sunshine and explore a new area. We were on the lookout for signs of mammals but we didn't see any this time.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Additional Options for Outdoor Hour Challenge 43 Growing Molds

We haven't completed Outdoor Hour Challenge 43 yet but I wanted to give some additional ideas for options to the original challenge.

Here are some additional ideas to get you started with observing molds for Outdoor Hour Challenge 43.

Here is a YouTube video that shows mold growing on bread and then an orange. It is a short and sweet video. Please remember to preview.



How about some clipart for your notebook?

This diagram shows the parts of bread mold.

Label for this one:
"Showing One of the More Common Molds found on Fruits and Bread. The tiny stalks grow vertically into the air. The end of each thread swells into a small round knob, from the inside of which hundreds of minute bodies, called spores, burst. As a is seen a large knob filled with spores." — Blaisedell, 1904


Here is a link to a whole list of information about puffballs and there are fantastic images to view as well.
Puffballs at MushroomExpert.com


If you are brave, you can grow mold in your own Mold Terrarium. I would love to see your results. We have conducted this experiment before and we found the best place to put our jar was in our laundry room cupboard where it was usually warm and dark.

Here is a complete booklet on fungus/mushrooms for you to look at using with your child. Preview it before printing the whole packet out since there are a lot of pages. I especially like page 17, 18, 21, 22, and 25 to print out and put in your nature journal.
Mushrooms PDF

Hope you found something here to spark your interest. Our next Outdoor Hour Challenge will be on January 9th.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom