I’ve taken several nice leisurely walks in the woods by our house with my camera this week. The fall weather has been glorious with just the right amount of rain. Going through the photos I took, I noticed that there was a theme running through some of them, hence my title for this blog entry.

First there are the trees. The vines wrap themselves around like greedy lovers that won’t let go.

The leaves.

The tree fungi (which I find particularly fascinating) also like to take prisoners. Since they grow so quickly and can appear overnight after a good rain, their prisoners-to-be are taken by surprise.

Let’s take a closer look at the one above. It has two prisoners—the branch and the vine which has been captured twice. I think the little slug is just visiting.

More! Morels! Rick mowed the little piece of grass that I can’t reach with Johnny yesterday and found these:

A grandfather and grandson! Just growing in the grass, but adjacent to the flower bed where we found their “cousin” growing last week. Look how little the small one is next to my finger.

In this photo you can see how far apart they are growing from each other. See them? Big morel at the bottom of the photo; little one at the top in a direct line.

And, yes, we will be eating them ... soon.

These mushrooms were found growing in the backyard. I’m sure they have a name but we normally call this kind SBMs (small brown mushrooms). In other words, too hard to classify. No. We won’t be eating these.

As a side note: I sincerely hope no one was too upset by my “Morel” of the story the other day. My sister and Rick both found the story touching and sad. I guess my short story was a hit since I made my readers feel sympathy for a poor little mushroom!