Day 297: Likin' these lichens

Only seventy days to go... The picture I took on Day 70 was of a nice sunrise over Mt Seymour. No such luck today, Friday the Thirteenth of January 2012, a dull, chilly winter's day. I've been trying to get a good lichen picture for ages, mostly due to the fact that it's hard to make them look interesting :-) But I stumbled on this little bush, and noticed it was amply endowed with lots of lichen. Nice - and the colourful leaves are a bonus. Not bad for a dull day.

Likin' these lichens

Day 238: What a fun guy!

On Sunday I walked past the most amazing little group of fly agaric fungi clustered at the base of a tree. I knew I had to get back soon before they were past it, and/or they'd been kicked to bits. I decided that I had to take advantage of the fine weather yesterday, and I was surprised to see today dawn clear and sunny. At first, I thought I'd prefer cloudy conditions to limit the reflections off the fungi, but the low morning sun illuminated them perfectly. I had the polarizer and tripod with me, to make sure I could get sharp photos, and I spent about ten minutes sizing up and taking a few shots. It was a tough choice, but the pair of fully-opened toadstools in warm morning light won the day. I'm really very pleased with the results, and a definite convert to using a polarizer for these kinds of photos.

Today's number play: 2 to the power of 3 is 8.

A pair of poisonous parasols

Day 75: A fine day for a mini-hike

A fine day indeed, and we met with Andrew and Merewyn for a gentle hike around Minnekhada Regional Park out near Port Coquitlam. Lots of woodland flowers in bloom: bleeding heart, foamflower, fringe-cup, false lily-of-the-valley, piggyback plant, starflower (lots of starflower!) and some western columbine (or rain-flowers as the Haida people call them).

For one reason or another, most of the flower photos didn't really turn out, but we found one spectacular patch of spiky orange fungi growing on a log, and one of those photos turned out just right. We finished up the hike and found a gelato place to cool down.

Fungi mini-forest