Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just after 4:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 41° under cloudy-skies with winds of 5 mph that make it feel more like 37°. Today's high is forecast to be 44°, under cloudy-skies this morning that will give way to sunny skies this afternoon. It still looks like we'll see 57° on Friday. But then, as before, we'll bounce around and be in the 40s or lower 50s for many more days.

The sun will rise today @ 7:26 a.m. and set later @ 8:11 p.m.

We accomplished all we had planned for yesterday, and more. Today, we have only the fur-children's nail grinding and one other thing on our agenda.

When I was out with the fur-children around 12:00 noon yesterday, I saw that mushrooms of various sizes and types had taken up residence in the vast gardens. Being the amateur photographer that I am, I had Mary hand me my trusty Olympus DSLR camera and proceeded to take some pix. Some are only so-so, but some I like a lot. I'll let you decide regarding the ones that I liked. All of the pix were taken with my telephoto lens and the camera set on the Scene mode using the landscape feature.

Taken at a very close range that captured the mushrooms and the surrounding wood chips.

Same shot. longer range

The concrete St. Francis of Assisi, whom we brought back from one of our extended stays in Pensacola Beach/Pensacola, FL several years ago,  surrounded by rabbits, squirrels, and tiny mushrooms. I think that St. Francis would like this shot. 

I framed this shot to include a leaf that was trying to hide the tiny mushrooms

I'm not sure of the variety, but I like this pic.

I was focused on the mushrooms, and "accidentally" blurred out their surroundings.

Overall, I think that for an amateur who uses the camera when when the mood strikes, I believe that I got some great shots.

Growing nearby, are these tulips that are about three to four weeks away from blooming.

In Monday's blog, I included a picture colored by Kerry Fitzgerald from the Grand Haven Coloring Book, written and crated by Barbara Carlson. Mary always reads my blog and she was inspired to do some coloring of her own. I may have created a "Coloring Monster" with that inclusion. Mary took over my reserve set of colored pencils, the soft-mat I use for a surface to color on, and my electric pencil-sharpener.

She set about coloring a picture of some leprechauns and mushrooms while I read more of 11/22/63 in the Lazy Boy in her office as our fur-children slept nearby. So far, Mary's efforts are producing some great shadings and variations. If she is going to follow a muse of her own, I believe that it is time for her to order her own sharpener and her own soft-mat. She is welcome to the reserve set of pencils that I had been keeping in the closet of my studio.

Today, I plan to rake a few leaves from Mary's front-yard rose garden and put them in bags for Thursday's pick-up. I won't do too much, as promised. I also hope to read more, play more music, and collectively, we can walk the fur-children this afternoon. Ciao.