What Lies beneath

Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.

Thomas Carlyle

An Array of Mushrooms

I looked for mushrooms in the woods behind my house one day after listening to a Hidden Brain podcast about slowing down. They were everywhere - and then I learned some things I didn’t know.

They seem to appear overnight, but the mushrooms we see are only part of much bigger, much older structures. They are the reproductive fruit of a network of mycelia living underneath the earth, a system of branches and threads spanning far beyond the part we see.

They feed on wood and leaf, living and dead. (Here it’s like a forest within a forest, of mushroom and moss)

They are abundant (Shelves on a dead log)

They can be Seemingly Solitary.

They can step into a tale (Amanita Muscaria - the mushroom from Alice in Wonderland)

They can be delicate and beautiful ( Crown-tipped Corral Mushroom among leaves, shelves and moss)

They can be shy

“Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding…”

From Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms” poem

They can stand together like a tiny army

“We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.”

from Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms” poem

My curiosity has been piqued by the reading I’ve done this week about mushrooms. I think I will be returning to this again in the future. I used some lines from my favorite poem about mushrooms by Sylvia Plath. To read the whole poem, and a great article about how it relates to the scientific truth about mushrooms, click here.

Thank you so much for being here! I will see you next week!

Once in a Blue Moon

The surface of the Moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities and prominences, being not unlike the face of the Earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep valleys.

Galileo Galilei

Fragment

It was a quiet day,

but the night was wild -

with a fire blazing,

a chorus of cicadas singing,

and a giant blue moon

rising in the black sky.

The wild night is calling. - Van Morrison

Who has smelled the woodsmoke at twilight, who has seen the campfire burning, who is quick to read the noises of the night?

Rudyard Kipling

Moon Rising through the Trees

I wanted to share the moon photo while the moon is still nearly full, just in case you haven’t seen it. Maybe it will inspire you to go outside tonight. The first and last photos were taken with a new telephoto lens. After a big learning curve, I think I finally got the settings right. Anyway, I was up pretty late figuring it out (and waiting for the moon to clear the trees), so I’ll keep this one short.

Thank you so much for being here! I will see you next week!

Faith of a Butterfly

Eventually I saw that the path of the heart requires a full gesture, a degree of abandon that can be terrifying. Only then is it possible to achieve a sparkling metamorphosis.

Carlos Castaneda

Metamorphosis

A tiny egg, left on a leaf, begins to split open. A worm-like thing, not much bigger than a piece of dirt crawls out and begins to eat. The little creature grows and sheds its skin, and grows again, and again and again, until one day it begins to feel a change in its body. Knowing instinctively that this change requires action, the creature finds a spot to spin a silk hammock to hang from. After the creature hangs itself here, its outer skin forms a soft shell that hardens into a firm case, almost mummy-like. This is a precarious time.

The creature is immobile and unable to protect itself from predators. Inside, its body is dissolving into liquid and reforming, gradually changing the function of nearly every cell. One day, the re-formed body inside is stronger than the outer shell- and moving restlessly, breaks the shell open.

Wings! Now it has wings! Beautiful, colorful wings. Blood pumps from its little heart to fill them with the strength they need to stretch out and fly - and to achieve this, all the little creature had to do was nearly die.

A monarch clinging to a Milkweed Flower (in the company of a bee) - milkweed is the only plant where monarchs can lay their eggs. I noticed this year that many of my neighbors let the milkweed grow in their gardens. Some even purposely planted it. I am sure that’s why I’ve seen more monarchs this year, and it’s another reason I love my neighbors.

Zebra longwing - this is a butterfly I saw in Florida, at Oleta River State Park, earlier this year.

Mexican Silverspots mirroring each other - Miami Beach.

A gathering of pearl crescent butterflies (and a bee) along the trail in Teton-Bridgerton National Forest

A swallowtail that stayed. I usually find them to be such frantic flyers, but this one was happy in my neighbors flowers.

Pretty little cabbage white butterfly on the marjoram blossoms in my front garden.

Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. Hans Christian Andersen

All of these photos, except the last one, were taken this year. I am always looking for butterflies when I see flowers and the weather is warm. I knew, but didn’t really understand, the stages of the life of a butterfly until I was researching it for this post. It made me think of moments in my life when I am fearful and uncertain about forces that are out of my control. What if I could see these things as a metamorphosis, making a me stronger version of myself?

If you want to know more about the transition from caterpillar to pupa (chrysalis) to butterfly, click here. From the perspective of a human, especially a claustrophobic one, the whole concept is terrifying.

Thank you so much for being here! I will see you next week!

P.S. I have some 8X10 prints of the last picture available, if you’re interested, and I can custom print any of the photos in my blog. Just email me by using this link: Rhoda Lewis.