Washington: Icy Winter's Morn

Is it cold where you are or are you gliding into the dog days of summer? Here, now, it's pretty chilly, with winter's grasp holding firm over the Puget Sound and surrounding regions. Clouds in various shades of grey generally dominate the skyscape, though there are the occasional bursts of blue and hints of the sun's warmth breaking through to remind you it still dances out there, just beyond the blanket of moisture hovering above. While it's generally just shy of cold enough to snow, we still get ample rain that, in the coldest hours of the darkest portions of the evening, can freeze over to a delicate frost decorating the world when we wake. Depending on the morning after, the frost can last for a surprisingly variable window of time before dissolving into steam in the sun's rays. Like I said above, though- it's rarely cold enough to snow, with the chance of it snowing on Christmas day somewhere around 7% or lower. That's generally a good bit more likely than in Vegas, where they average only 2 inches of rain per year (whereas the Seattle area gets an average of about 37.5 inches of rain per year).  I'm no statistician, but even I can see the odds of a white Christmas in Vegas are exceedingly slim- though it has happened, once, in 2008, so it's not an utterly impossible thing, just exceptionally improbable. Not so improbable as to get your ship to the restaurant at the end of the universe, but certainly improbable enough to note. 

Antho and I, of course, have been luxuriating in the cold and ambient moisture in this variable and transforming an environment. Waking to a bright, cloudless morning with our world metamorphized by a glittering profusion of ice droplets is fascinating, and new.  While we slept, a giant came through and dropped fistfuls of glitter, or perhaps a fleet of faeries flew in with an army of bedazzlers and spackled everything they could in shimmer. But again, like most of the magical things in life, this beauty is fleeting and as the rays of sunlight dance across the droplets they begin to lose form and evaporate, disappearing into the ether.  All this hydration means that the plant life, at least that hardy enough to weather the declining temperatures, is still thriving. We were surprised to find these brilliant pink blossoms bursting into abundant bloom after the rains started sweeping the area with more vigorous regularity. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into the fleeting beauty of the beads of ice on this brisk winter's morning!

Washington: An assortment of shrooms and blooms

Life, uh, finds a way.

Never, in my experience, has that proven truer than here in the Pacific Northwest. Life abounds, multiplies, squeaks, squawks, shouts and slithers. There are vines crawling up any tree or surface they can get hold on, moss and molds fuzzing up on an astounding (and annoying, for home owner's) array of surfaces, and the mushrooms...oh boy, the mushrooms! While Antho and I have both invariably dabbled in the psychedelic kind at one point or another during our younger years, we're still quite fascinated by the sheer variety in shape, color, and size of mushrooms in all their forms. There's no shortage of mushrooms to be found up here, where the ambient moisture allows ample soft, decaying woods and roots for the mycological oddities to feed upon. Did you know that the mushrooms we see above ground are actually just the fruiting bodies and that the overall body of the mushroom is hidden underground? It's kind of like seeing only the apples but not the apple tree... And while we'd occasionally find some form of fungi growing in Nevada, it was rarely this varied or colorful! We've found deep purple mushrooms snaking their way through the yard, tracing the path of a tree root, and nearly trampled itty bitty little white caps barely the size of a pencil eraser! Then there are these big, fluffy pancake looking beasts that seem to happily lay claim to the yard, too, before suddenly recoiling into themselves and collapsing, like a dying star, except their final collapse withers away into a displeasing brownish-black sludge of unmistakable decay instead of a supernova. I suppose that's the preferable, route, though, as mini-supernova wouldn't make a pleasant yard-find. 

Anyway, improbabilities of physics aside, mushrooms are super common to find up here. They come in a startling range of options! You shouldn't eat any that you find without being supervised by a trained professional! Yes, you can become a professional mycologist. Mushrooms can, and do, make excellent food options and can be absolutely and utterly delicious, but there are simply SO MANY KINDS of mushrooms out there, and many look SO similar, that you really should leave it to a knowledgeable professional to select edible mushrooms when foraging. There's the handy Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS for short) for Seattle and Puget-adjacent residents, who are happy to teach and inform new-comers and the cap-curious in their clinics and classes.  I'm sure other areas have their own fungi-fan-clubs, too! I've met people who were fascinated by the fungal forms all the way over in Japan and Korea, along with Stateside, so I've no doubt there's plenty of resources if you're willing to dig a bit!  

These guys are just a scattered sampling of the various finds we've stumbled upon in our own backyard. Enjoy!

Washington: Slime Mold and Mushroom friends

When it comes to the strange and varied things that flourish and thrive in the moist climate of the Pacific Northwest, slime molds and mushrooms reside in that weird peripheral zone bordering between plant and animal life, crawling and climbing out of the dark, dank corners and often seeming to pop up overnight. When shown in sped-up time-lapse videos, you can see slime molds pulsating and reaching out in their relentless quest to consume any tasty microorganisms crawling on the grasses, plants, and other surfaces populating the terrain. While it's easy to assume that slime molds might be fungi, they are in fact amoeba, so they are separate from those cap-sporting cohorts you might spot nearby while out in the garden. 

Antho is fascinated by slime molds, perhaps in large part due to their incredible rarity throughout the better portion of our lives. Deserts aren't exactly ideal places for such moist entities, after all, so your chances of encountering one in Vegas are exceedingly minute. Same goes for most forms of mushrooms, so we've been pretty astounded by the diversity of forms we've been spying. We've spent a lot of time outdoors simply looking at the ground since we got to the Pacific Northwest, as everything is so verdant and lush there's literally life everywhere we look. A few weeks back we accidentally stepped on a banana slug that was making its way across our step and we were heartbroken! Well, to be honest, I was devastated, since I was likely the culprit behind the slug's untimely demise. We'd noticed the leopard print adorned creature the night prior, and remarked on how stunning it was...then I had to run out to the van to grab something, having forgotten all about our discovery by that point, and when the light of morning revealed what had happened it was long too late... We gave him (or her) a little burial under a bush in the yard. Cheesy, right? I genuinely felt bad about it, and Antho was kind enough to help me dig a little hole to lay them to rest in, along with handling the slimy remains for me. It's the circle of life... Ashes to ashes, slime to slime.