Along the way, I found a little wilderness called Carolin's Grove. And it had some magnificent pine trees, along with magnificent pine cones.
(I don't know how the trees can grow so much taller in New York when we get the same weather and light in Michigan--but perhaps it is simply that these trees are older than most stuff you see around my neck of the mitten. (To mix a metaphor.) The oldest trees (well, the oldest white pines, I guess; I don't know if they are the oldest trees) in Michigan are in a preserved old growth forest--one square mile--in the middle of the lower peninsula. They are tall, of course, but they are not so much tall as big around. My grandfather, my aunt and I could not play ring-around-the-rosy around the biggest one when I was thirteen. I mean, that's not California-redwood-tree-big, but you know. Pretty impressive for Michigan. Anyway, I digress, and perhaps pointlessly. Because really, the biggest problem with Michigan is that they cut all the trees down sometime around when my grandfather was born, in 1904; and by that I mean, "were pretty much finished cutting them down." He was born in one of the lumbercamps up north. So, most of the trees around here are just hitting the century mark. Which is pretty young, in tree time.)
I thought
sunnydecho might want a giant pinecone. So I picked one up. And thought, "How odd, the thing has sprouted!"
But then I looked closer and realized the thing was a tiny mushroom!
The very next cone I flipped over had even more and bigger mushrooms growing out of it, which you can see if you click through on any of the pictures above.
Then I flipped thirty more cones and found no more tiny mushroooms. It was totally luck of the draw that I found the special ones right off the bat. I put them both back where I found them, and took one of the more boring cones home to Sunny.
Now, if I were
asakiyume, I would write you a clever and moving origin story of these tiny mushrooms. But since I am not, I will go work on my book.