Friday, July 06, 2007

Letterboxers Incognito

First the good news: the temperatures are low. In the 80s in Houston in July! Virtually unheard of weather.

So then the bad news: rain, rain, rain...lots of it and more today. All this rain = slop & mud & mosquitos! (and lung issues). This makes letterboxing and hiking somewhat unpleasant. Much easier to sit around the house and read or play MLB baseball.

But, there's some additional good news (this would be the third hand if you're keeping track). In some ways this deluge is good for our letterboxing adventures. As you can see from the photo above, the boys have become very interested in mycology. We have about 4 different books about mushrooms & fungi, which they avidly study. The kids are very interested in outings where they can also mushroom hunt (our version of hunting is to photograph and try to identify the species we find. We don't pick). Of course, I may choose parks & trails that "just happen" to have letterboxes too. And all that rain has led to a myriad of species, just waiting to be found. Jellies, bunches, fairy rings, chanterelles, puffballs, slimes...we're searching for them all!

And this leads to good letterboxing practices. We have no need to make up excuses for why we're poking around in the woods. If ever confronted or observed, we have our books and our photographs. We are letterboxers incognito, disguised as fungi fanatics!

These photos were all taken at Little Cypress Creek Preserve, only open weekends.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pity the boys can't pop over to England and find my Mushroom Series. The stamps tend to be of all the deadly mushrooms, but I am sure the boys know all about those already :-)

YT

hoppers said...

Good job kiddos!! one more thing to love about Houston, the fungus amoung'us. We grow big boletes down here in Fall. I will try to scrounge up a pic, and here's to counting blessings. . its not too much rain, its mushroom weather!

David Baril Jr. said...

when i visted houston, i cant say i saw much in the way of shrooms. i did happen to find lots of huge ants in a hole at the bottom of a tree where the box goes!