Hello everyone and welcome back to our series called “Little Things” which I began back on June 6 and meant to make this a weekly series. It didn’t quite work out that way. But hopefully now I can keep it a weekly post until something new begins in the fall. This will be our summer series, just as “Nature’s Art” is our winter series. In this series will be a lot of different things that are small and quite often go unnoticed by people. Some will be more noticeable than others perhaps, but we still don’t give them much of a thought even when we do see them, with a few exceptions as we will see over the next few weeks. Some of these “little” things may not appear so little but because they blend in so well with their background I decided to add some anyway. But most will be small and sometimes very hard to see.

In the pic above is the “conifer false morel” mushroom. These mushrooms grow in the spring, which for us means they will show up in May or early June. As their name implies, they like to grow near or under conifers, such as pines, spruce and balsam trees. I found them down by the river under some red and white pines. These are not really “little”, they can grow up to 4 inches tall and wide (10cm). But they do blend in well making them hard to see unless you are specifically looking for them. These are NOT morel mushrooms, a type that people like to eat. These are false morels and are very toxic (poisonous), they can make a person very sick or even cause death. It is best to leave these mushrooms alone.

Then in this next pic above is a tiny “goldenrod crab spider”. One of my readers wanted me to show some pics of spiders, so here is one that is rather interesting. I don’t like spiders of any kind really, but small ones are not a problem like the monster ones that come inside. Anyway, these little spiders like to sit on white or yellow flowers (like goldenrod, where they get their name). They can change color from white to yellow, though it takes a few days, and back again, a little quicker going back to white. This is a female which also has pink to red stripes or spots on it’s body. They are hunting spiders and will sit motionless on a flower waiting for an insect to get close enough, then it pounces and uses it’s venom to paralyze the insect. It especially likes wasps. The male is more brownish in color. When she lays her eggs she will spin a web around them and diligently guard them for about 3 weeks until they hatch and go on their way, then she dies shortly after.

Well, there is our second look at little things, next week I will have something else to share with you. I hope you have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2020 Steve McLeod.