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In 2016 I’m doing a 365 Nature project. Learn more about the project and see all the 365 Nature posts.


Since yesterday afternoon I’ve been watching the weather closely. I was really hoping to get a dry morning so I could bring my tripod to the arboretum and try and get better mushroom photos since the ones I took yesterday were dark and grainy. The forecast called for rain overnight and I hoped for a break in the morning. And did we get rain overnight. Our basement, which saw very little water last autumn and winter, has been regularly soaked over the last week. This morning I had to vacuum the water and dump the container three times.

This morning the rain continued and a look at the radar map made me put my tripod away and leave my camera at home. A steady rain persisted all morning destroying any thoughts of photography today. It was the kind of dark day that makes you think the sun will never shine again. On our way to the arboretum for school, the rain was torrential and at least one intersection was flooded. This is the first time I haven’t gone for a walk after dropping my daughter off at the arboretum. The rain continued so heavily that even with a rain jacket, my pants would have been soaked through before I was five minutes in.

Towards the end of the school day it finally stopped and I was able to wander through the meadow looking for mushrooms before pickup time. I found some that I hadn’t noticed yesterday right by the forest classroom. One large group of dark brown mushrooms make a crescent moon shape while two shiny white ones nestled together. Further out in the meadow, spongy  mushrooms with a thick reddish base poked through the grass.

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.

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