Had a great hike today. Hiked right at 11 miles in a fresh water sandy creek. Found a baby lamprey fish. Some cool mushrooms I’ve not IDed yet. The flower is something in the Pea family I’ve not seen before. Most of the water was just 1-2 feet deep. Some was 3 feet deep. A few spots was 4+ feet deep and the murkiness of it had me paranoid as I swam through it lol. Got a cool book, Southern Wonder: Alabama’s Surprising Biodiversity that I plan on start reading tonight. Can’t wait!
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A handful of pictures of my hike earlier today. Finally found some gopher apples. The white fruit. I find the plants all the time but the fruit is always not ripe OT already eaten. Within 24 hours they almost are always eaten by something.
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What’s the critter in the shell, a spider?
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It’s a hermit crab.
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Huh. I was looking for the ball articulated joints of a crab and didn’t think they were there. But I haven’t seen a hermit crab since 1973. 
We saw them a lot in coastal SC, but not as big as yours!
Or are the ‘ball joints’ only on the claws?
I have no idea to be honest. The hermit crabs here range from 1/2 inch wide and long to 3 inches long and a inch wide typically.
Oyster mushroom
Chanterelles mushroom. First time I’ve seen one in person. Smells like fruit and is a choice edible. Has cool fake gills caused by folds.
Xerocomus species.
Pulchroboletus rubricitrinus. It’s actually a bit rare and related to the Boletus genus. It’s edible. It’s one of the few in the family that has yellow spores and quickly turns blue when opened to oxygen that is edible. Slightly acidic taste. I’m going to cook it later and eat it.
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beautiful mushrooms. Just reminded that all mushrooms are edible…once.
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Here’s what passes for wildlife in my neck of the woods. As squirrels go, I’d say this one has a pretty mellow outlook on life. (It’s chilled out on our fence several times now.)
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My next door neighbor has a bird feeder in her front yard that I can see from the table I have been working at. It is constant entertainment to watch the squirrels hang from their toes to get into it.
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Reminds me of a bad joke i did few years back at thanksgiving. I made home masjed potatoes and turnips with mushroom gravy and everyone kept complimenting the gravy and I told them I’m glad everyone liked it. I was not sure if I picked the right mushrooms and thought maybe it had a slightly off taste than when someone made it for me but it was close enough. They then were like these are wild picked and you’re not sure if it’s the right one? So I said I’m pretty sure and showed them a picture of the mushrooms I collected and said it looks like the one They used and googled a picture of some mushroom that was distinctly different and I could see it on everyone’s face like what the heck did you do.
Also people in general who know me, especially my family, almost never come over to eat. Once they realized I stored edible, inedible, and poisonous mushrooms in my fridge on plates they all just started not coming around. Plus I often reuse old tea jugs and stuff to make sumac and lavender lemonade, goldenrod herbals and so on. They all just rather not take a chance because they have no idea what they are looking. I use to have a deep freezer outside and people would steal fruits from it. It was set at like 40°f. So I started placing “woody” mushrooms in it and stuff and everyone stopped getting the fruits out as well.
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Good to know Christians too can enjoy the full bodied flavor of a dark sense of humor. Heck, it’s probably even more potent in your hands the way giggles at a funeral can be.
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I do enjoy dark humor. It was nurtured lol. My mom use to keep this paper I wrote back in like 3rd grade where we had to pick a person with superpowers and I picked Freddie Kruger because I thought it was cool he could create dream worlds and attack you in it. I also use to have almost all of my toys as a kid we’re universal monsters like Dracula and Wolfman and even had chucky dolls. For better or worse, I really like comedians like Billy Eichner and Anthony Jeselnik. I also like contention humor.
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Ilex vomitoria is another SE to Texas plant I just read about (on Facebook). Apparently people make tea out of it while everyone who wants to do something else on their land just want to get rid of it. Has anyone here actually tried drinking tea made from its leaves? The only plant in North America containing caffeine, or so the write up says. I think I’ll probably stick to my PG tips, I’ve never been an adventurous partaker of teas.
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Though I did not make it myself a woman from a Mennonite family that lives down the river that’s big into naturalism use to make some that also had watermelon in it and it was good.
In general most herbals seems very different from tea. Most people are use to sweet tea and so they don’t drink much herbal “teas”.
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Started drinking tea to which milk and three teaspoons of sugar was added before I started school. So I think that qualifies as sweet tea, though we never had it iced. Eventually I weaned myself off the sugar to the point I could enjoy a cup without any.
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That’s how I went to skim milk over the period of about a month. 2% to 1% was no problem, so I started with about 1/10 of a glass of skim and the rest 1%. Then over the month I gradually reversed the proportions. Now any but skim tastes like drinking straight cream. I didn’t have to wean myself to diet pop – corn syrup sweetened pop tastes like straight syrup.