Friday Foto Friends with Lily Grace

Hi Everyone! Mommie said I could post my own favorite pictures for the week here on my page since she did hers over on her page, Closed Doors, Open Windows.   I saw some interesting things this past week too that are different from what Mommie saw, so here are MY pictures!!

One day when we came back from our walk, I noticed something purple sticking up out of the ground under the big oak trees in our front yard.  Since I really like the color purple, I wanted to see what this could be:

Mommie said it was some kind of mushroom, and she'd never seen a purple one before!

After looking it up online, she thinks it is called a Cortinarius Iodes kind of mushroom.  She doesn't know if it is toxic or not, but she said not to touch it or try to eat it...

There were a lot of them popping up all under the oak trees in the thick piles of old oak leaves and acorns.

Looky at this one! It is all ruffles and looks like some kind of flower! Isn't it pretty?

There so many of them in all different shapes and stages of growth...I thought they were really really pretty and interesting!

Wow! Look at this one!! It looks like it is turning inside out or something like that!

And these two are like twins!!! They are just coming up through the leaves and they are stuck together:

This one is showing its under side and the light is shining through it. I really loved seeing these mushrooms, didn't you?

Oh, look! Another one!! No, there's two again!!  Mommie said I would make a good botanist or something like that... a person who likes to study flowers and leaves and trees and mushrooms and stuff! Maybe I will be that when I grow up! It sounds like fun to me! I love being in the woods!

And speaking of woods, while we were outside looking at the mushrooms, this big truck drove by our house with a bunch of tree logs piled up on it!

Mommie said it was unusual to see them driving through our neighborhood, and that they must have cut these off of some property back in the woods somewhere and they are taking them to the pulp mill.

They sure were big long tree trunks! It makes me sad to see them all cut down like that, but Mommie said there will be more trees planted and growing again, and they use trees like this to make paper and toilet paper and all kinds of things, so it isn't all bad.

Speaking of trees, we went on our back porch and I saw this yellow powdery stuff all over our tables and chairs. Mommie said it was pollen and that it blew out of the trees and onto our porch when the wind was blowing and then when we had a big bad thunderstorm the rain blew in and made it all smeary on the tables and stuff.

It sure was yucky, and you couldn't sit down on the chairs or you would get it all over your clothes. Mommie said the pollen also makes people sneeze and have stuffy noses and watery eyes and allergies and stuff.  But she said the pollen is necessary for the trees to keep living. It comes from the little tiny flowers or leaf buds that grow on the trees in the spring, and without the pollen they wouldn't keep growing every year.   So I guess it isn't all bad either.  

But Mommie said we could have some fun and squirt the hose on the tables and chairs and deck and clean all the pollen off.  She let me hold the hose and pull the trigger so the water would come out and wash off the pollen!  That was a lot of fun, and soon our tables and chairs were all pretty and clean again...Mommie said until the next bunch of pollen blows out of the trees again...

Oh, one other thing we did this week was watch some of the "Maine Cabin Masters" shows on TV! Mommie loves to watch them restore cabins and cottages and stuff in the special woods and lakes of Maine.  She said that they used to live in Maine, and that my "nephew" Noah still lives there! "Nephew?"  Yes, because he is my big brother Matthew's son, so that makes him a "nephew", but he is 21 years old and much much bigger than me.  Anyway, I hope I get to see him sometime, but Maine is far far away from Florida so I don't know when it will be. But anyway, we watched Maine Cabin Masters on TV. Mommie likes to listen to the people talk because they sound like people she knew in Maine. They talk kind of different than people in Florida.  Maybe we'll go visit sometime so I can see for myself.  

And then something else special happened.  Mommie is cleaning up the Valentine's stuff and putting away things that have been sitting out for a while. So she said it was time to put away the "Martin Sisters", remember them? Those pretty four ladies that had me visit for tea?  Well, Mommie said they are special friends who visit in the winter time, but now it was time to bring out some other special friends who visit in the spring time.  She calls these the Southern Belles.  Aren't they beautiful? 

Well, Mommie said I had to dress up a little nicer to have tea time with the Southern Belles, but I didn't have any other pretty dress besides my Valentine's Dress.  So she asked my friend Margie doll if I could borrow one of her special dresses for the day...and Margie said that would be fine.

It fits me perfectly, don't you think? I love it! Mommie said that her Mommy (Dorothea!) made this dress especially for Margie (see below)

I am happy that it fits me too, and that Margie was willing to let me borrow it for this special occasion.

And so the Southern Belles all seemed pleased to meet me and they said I could come back and visit any time.

Well, I guess that's all of my special pictures for this week. It's been raining all day, so we haven't been able to go outside at all. But it's fun to play indoors and find other special things to do on a rainy day!

Mommie said it is a good day to read some good books. And this one, "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson, was one of Mommie's special books when she was a little girl like me!

It is full of special poems that Mr. Stevenson wrote just for children.  Mommie said "The Swing" was one of her favorites:

"How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside...

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown...

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!"

And then I read some of the poems to the teddy bears, and they really liked it a lot!

Now, here's a "Happy Thought"

"The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

And so I will leave us with that "Happy Thought".

Until next time,

Love always,

Lily Grace

xoxoxo