Skip to main content

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


The complete opposite of yesterday, this morning was much brighter and the sun even came out. Naturally, I didn’t bring my tripod. I contented myself with a walk through the woodland garden which is ablaze with the Japanese Maples. There are as many colors are there are varieties and though they’ve passed their peak, it’s still a colorful walk. There are so many mushrooms yet to discover around the arboretum. As soon as one disappears, more emerge from the ground.

I then ventured down to the pond and stuck my net into the vegetation and was surprised how much colder the water has already turned since summer. I pulled out the usual, damselfly larvae and scuds, snails and flatworms. I was interested to examine the scuds again to see if they had more young or eggs. After Day 292, when I had discovered the baby scuds with the adult, I read about them and found the adults have pouches where they keep the eggs and the young. Today I found many scuds with blue eggs in their pouches, but none with the pink young like I found last time.

As I returned, I spotted more mushrooms near the pond and I wandered by to take a look. As seems to be the case, where there’s one, there are many more and I found a large patch of tiny, bright white mushrooms. Mixed in with them were patches of dark red mushrooms, much larger than the white ones. It was a colorful combination in the mulch under the trees.

Liked this? Take a second to support Kelly Brenner on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
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.

Leave a Reply