First, Zandvoort. I decided to make a sand boa. Robbert stared at it for a while and finally said, Are you making a vulva? Luckily, I don't plan on making sculpture my day job.

So, I decided to give a dragon a try next.

Eric decided to sculpt one of the more common scenes on the beach that day: someone laying face-down, sunning themselves... in this case extending under our beach towel. It looked pretty good, especially considering that he didn't use any water.

I found this great gray thing growing under the trees near my school. I picked it up out of curiosity... it looked more like a discarded softball than anything edible...

...but turn it over... and it all looks different. I admit, I never identified this thing to species. But I ate it anyway. Livin' on the edge in Amsterdam, eating mushrooms that are only identified to genus...

It is in the genus Leccinum, the birch boletes. It was growing under birch, which is a strong hint... but after determining that it was NOT one of the toxic species or a bitter bolete, I cooked it. It blackened in the heat, which is a dead giveaway that it's in the Leccinum group. They taste fabulous, if you don't mind eating something the color of graphite.

In other exciting news, I was cutting up a leek for dinner and found some tiny white things inside: by tiny I mean about 1mm long. Once again, dinner was interrupted by getting out the pocket microscope that Sue gave me and the tripod and photographing them. These photos I think adequatley answer the animal, vegetable, or mineral question.

They were rather pretty under the 'scope. My best guess is that they are something reproductive involving leeks.

If you've ever heard of Groundhog Day but weren't quite sure what a groundhog was, now you know. This one was blithely munching weeds in my parents' front yard in Kansas City.

Like bunnies, they can devour weeds with remarkable speed and dexterity... and are awfully cute when they do it too. They also are remarkably similar to marmots, their mountain cousins.

As my airplane project, I decided to do a Tie Dye Paul style T shirt. I started by sketching my basic plan out in pencil on the T shirt. Tie Dye Paul was kind enough to explain his technique to me... you stitch in the design you want, and apply the dye using a 1cc syringe (actually, I am at some advantage to Paul there... I know that it's not the syringe but the needle that gives you control, so I use a 3cc syringe and a 22 gauge needle).

About 8 hours of stitching later, this was the result.

And the back. The back is intended to be more clear than the front, I wanted the front to be more abstract. I also wanted the background to be more sky-blue than gray, but such is life.

The other shirt of which I am very proud from this group... Yes, it is basically a plain red shirt, with a little subtle patterning, which is exactly what I wanted. I intend to wear it to work.

Finally, some pictures from Washington! The one hike I really wanted to do this year was Icicle road. I used to drive up it to go mushroom hunting... but it washed out about 2 years ago when a landslide literally rerouted the Icicle River to the path of least resistance... the road. So I wanted to see the resculpted landscape, and my old mushroom spots without any competition... but the first thing we found was a butterfly convention.

There are really *a lot* of butterflies here.

They are mostly zebra swallowtails, but here's a tiger posing in the foreground. There are a few painted ladies and other miscellanious species mixed in, too.

Several lined up on the left.

Caught one with its wings open.

Nice lighting on the one in the middle.

Finally, the shot I came here to get: this is, or rather was, Icicle road.

More changes to this forest: notice the blackened tree trunk to the right? This area burned several years ago. In this spot only the undergrowth burned, but some of the bare patches on the mountain in the background are trees that were burned to ash.

Eric and Sue approaching the other side of the washout, about 3/4 of a mile further up. There's a trail that routes around the washout, so I'm not sure how long the river follows the road or where it just crosses it.

In some areas, however, it clearly wanders off-road. There were many areas with about 6 feet of icy clear water, flowing between the tree trunks.

Of course the other thing we were looking for was mushrooms... and our first find was an auspicious one! Eric found this enormous pair of B. edulis - note the size compared to the back pack next to them. PSMS members will recognize the site as Chatter Creek campground, home to many a mushroom foray. This bolete might well be the result of spores carried here by PSMS members. Unbelievably, this enormous fungus was entirely free of bugs.

In greater abundance at Chatter though were A. muscaria, mostly in buttons. This cut view shows the classic Amanita structure: cap, gills, and a cup-shaped volva surrounding the base..

And this shows the classic A. muscaria behavior of masquerading as a puffball.

The Icicle river in its more customary place.

Just a little further up the road, I spotted a snake. Oh, it's a rubber boa! said Sue, a Northwest native, and proceeded to pick it up. Unlike most wild snakes, it did not struggle, but instead settled comfortably into the warmth of Sue's hands. I guess if you're an ectotherm in the chilly Northwest, you take heat where you can get it.

Every now and then, as a mushroom hunter, you find a place like this. Every one of those light spots you see erupting from the ground is a cluster of B. edulis. And no, I won't tell you where... jut that it is above the washout and past the rubber boa.

The snows melted late this year: the morels were out in full force as well. The rain had set in with due diligence by then, so I snapped a quick photo, which was not in focus. It does show the morels' propensity for imitating fir cones, though.

The rain cleared to give a bit of golden hour light to these white flowers.

Even better up close.

The full catch of morels, with the kitchen knife for scale. Of course, knives come in varous sizes... but this is one of the big kind, about a foot long... and yes, that means some of the morels are nearly a foot long, too! Note that the photo was taken with a flash... it was after dark when we got back to camp, after being chased down the hill by a literal swarm of mosquitos. We made record time coming back down the hill!

There are many layers to this photo. First, this is the biggest bolete we've ever found: outsizing even the giant that Eric found at Chatter. Second, it was found in the forest, the only place that boletes can grow. Third, we won't be finding any more here, as the area is being logged. Fourth, note that this is our National Forest land, being logged for money. Finally, note that it is now closed to use by you and me, the public, because it is being used and used up by a private company. Notice the size of the tree in the foreground... How long did it take to get to this size in the dry Eastern Washington climate? A hundred years? A thousand?

The riches of the forest: our catch of boletes and morels (minus the ones we ate at the campsite).

From the side, highlighting the morels.

Eric attempting to illustrate the size of the fallen log and the cluster of polypores. He looks like he's behind the log, but he is actually directly under it, and the cluser of polypores is nearly as big as him.

I somehow don't think this emergency shelter helped much.

Snow bridge, on Olympus.