NASA "Earth as Art" Winners

I am nuts for the idea of Landsat and other satellite images of Earth as works of art. I wish I could afford large format, high resolution prints to hang on my wall. Here are some very nice examples from the NASA website.

Mushrooms on Beaverdam Trail

Sally, the boys, and I and went for a Sunday morning walk on Beaverdam Trail in the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge this morning. It was kind of magical. The canopy is fully enclosed and the what light hit the ground layer was dappled and rippling. Since our area has experienced almost daily thunderstorms for the past three weeks, many varieties of fungus have emerged. Within ten minutes of entering the woods I saw four different kinds of mushrooms. I knew we were in for a treat and tried to document each individual type. It was difficult to consistently get good focus with a point-and-shoot Nikon and two iPhones. The forest floor was  dark in most locations where mushrooms were found. Since the camera flash tends to wash out the colors, we had to keep turning it off, which requires a steadier shooting hand. Here are about twenty shots of individual types that are worth looking at. In addition to this, I have about a half a dozen that are too blurry to share. Add to that those which were just plain decided not to photograph and we easily could have seen thirty distinct species today. Thirty species is amazing for a two-hour meander through a half a mile of bottomland hardwood forest along Octok Creek. If you are interested in mushrooms and you live in an area that has had a lot of rain, the time to get out into the woods is now.

As always, remember that you can click on the picture for a larger version.

To start off, here is a picture of Bluff Lake taken today from the Bluff Lake Boardwalk. These lilypads are interesting, but I don’t think they are a good thing for the lake.

Here are two pictures of the same section of the Bluff Lake Boardwalk, one taken on 27 February and one taken today, 22 July. And now for the mushrooms:

Pretty cool huh! Remember: No Child Left Inside!