Day 17: Motley Monday - November 17, 2025

 Not much going on today.  The weekend was spent going through a lot of tissues due to my head cold.  Not much of a cough, for which I am glad, coughs always hang on.  This was in my sinuses.  I spoke too soon, I started coughing last night. 

A few days ago I cut my finger on a can lid.  It was the first time I ever experienced the vasovagal reflex.  My son was bandaging my finger and I got extremely hot, started sweating, and thought I was going to vomit.  I didn't.  I did tear my sweater off (fortunately I had on a sports bra!), and after a few minutes of nausea (hanging over the toilet ) was able to lay down in a fan to recover.  Not fun.  Now I'm down to just a big Band-Aid® on my pinky.  And I use the brand name Band-Aid® on purpose, they are better than the others!  There are a few other things I find worth paying more for the brand name.  Scotch® tape and Crisco shortening for sure. 

I made blueberry muffins yesterday morning. I thought they'd hit the spot when sick, and they are quick and easy to make.  I usually have some blueberries in the freezer.  I buy them when they are cheap, and just pop the entire container into the freezer.  I wasn't the only one to enjoy the muffins!  

The wind has since blown all the leaves off this little plum sucker tree.  

A series of Mickey "Outstanding in His Field."  Or, "Out Standing in the Alyssum."   It was cold, damp, and foggy out, and he was tired of waiting for me to finish taking photos of autumn color and dried seedheads.  The door was open, so he could have gone in, but opted to guilt me by standing frozen in the alyssum.  He stayed frozen even as I circled him from different directions!  I told him he was "being weird."

I found a huge mushroom in the grass! It's Agaricus campestris, a Field mushroom.  It's a very common type around the world, which makes me wonder why I haven't seen one before.  It's too large to miss!  The thin floppy part near my fingers is the skirt.  When a mushroom is growing the gills are protected by a partial veil which stretches as the mushroom grows.  Eventually it breaks and forms the skirt, or ring.

Gills and bottom of the skirt.  It looks like the skirt has gills too, but it doesn't, that's just marks left from where it pressed against the forming gills. 

I remembered to make a gill print!  You can do this with mushrooms from the grocery store too, try out different kinds of mushrooms.  

Then, I forgot to check it the next day, so too many spores had fallen to show a really nice gill print. 

Hope you have a nice week.

Day 17 of NaBloPoMo