Moss, Moss, Moss. And Mushrooms.

Oh, the rain, the rain, the rain. We are currently experiencing heavy downpours, thunder and lightening, and hail. It's a great weekend. December is already way above average for rainfall and yet it keeps on coming down. Pouring down. Bucketing down.

There are benefits. Small, cute benefits, in fact. In this case, benefits in the form of mosses (which en masse can be pretty large) and fungi. Take a look at the magical mossy world of Mill Creek Campground:

These first two pictures are tiny microcosms on top of campsite posts. They're probably four by four inches, but they pack a lot of biomass into a tiny space. And they're cute!

Then there are the trees draped in moss and ferns and all sorts of other hangers-on.

And then there's this. Whatever it is. It was unclear whether this was some sort of fungus all on it's own or if it had colonized a leaf as a substrate. There were a few of them around and this one has a second type of fungus growing on it near the top center of the photo.

Slacker Parents

Last month, as you may recall, Darcy turned four. This means that she SHOULD have had her four-year-old checkup and accompanying shots. We were slackers, however, and kinda forgot about that part. I called yesterday morning to make an appointment before we head south for Christmas. Lo and behold, they had a cancellation 25 minutes from my call, and I rushed over to pick up Darcy from preschool and got there five minutes early.

She did so well. She cooperated with everything without tears or struggles. This has not been the case for doctors visits for a while. And she has had a major growth spurt! She is 42.5 inches tall now, which shifted her height upwards by many percentiles.

Unfortunately, the visit did not end without tears. I don't really blame her. The nurse came in with FIVE needles. My poor little pincushion. She recovered reasonably quickly after they were all over and the bandaids were on, but she still got to go to the store after preschool to pick out ice cream (vanilla), sprinkles (rainbow), and sauce (chocolate syrup) for dessert last night.

A Day Of Moss

Today was one of those rare winter weekend days without rain. It's raining now, of course, but the precipitation held off until about six o'clock and we got to spend quite a lot of time outside. It was warm(ish), too, so very enjoyable!

We walked around the Mill Creek campground after having a slightly disappointing salmon-viewing in Mill Creek. We saw a few huge salmon, but only a few. The water was high and fast, so the water clarity was against us. Mill Creek campground is one mossy, fungus-y place and I took lots of pictures of cute mosses and fungi. I will share them very soon. But for this evening, your entertainment is in the form of Darcy.

After we walked around for quite a while, we went back to the bridge to see if there were any more salmon. We started throwing leaves in one side of the bridge so we could watch them as they appeared on the other side. The big-leaf maple leaves were perfect for this game, but Darcy just threw handfuls of whatever was lying around, too. Here she is, getting a running start after dropping leaves in:

...and waiting for them to come out downstream: