Happy Fall!

Early each Fall, as early as late August even, you can find me sitting on my knees,

crawling on my belly or lying flat with my nose almost touching the moist soil. The reason? Toadstools!
Ever since I was a child I have been mesmerised by Fungi.

Each year at school we studied them. When I was teaching, I made loads of mushroom lessons each Fall. And did excursions to look for them. Hunting for books about them to look at their pictures.

I'm not one to know each and every one by name, I only know a few.

It's not their name but their appearance enchants me. Their colours, habitat, their smell - everything!

I loved to draw them, paint them and take pictures of them.

I long to capture their beauty and share it with whomever shares my love for them.

Maybe even by looking at my photo someone also becomes a toadstool lover...

Even though I have lots of photo's already, each new fall I treasure my latest pictures.

Each year I get that creative ghust to work with them, create stationery, postcards, little tags -whatever comes to mind- as if they were my very first captures.

This fall I have decided to share my love for this particular type of toadstool in writing for a change.

Its official name is the 'Amanita muscaria'. It is quite common in our Dutch lowlands and loves to associate with birch trees, beeches, oaks, firs and chestnut trees. You should not eat it, as it is poisonous. Not lethal for people, but for small animals, like a dog for instance, it might be fatal.

Lethal though it may be, to me its beauty is ever lasting and nothing can distract me from it.
Or it should be the discovery of 'new' mushrooms to study...

o* o *o