Weird Mushrooms & Fall Leaves {Central New York Photographer}

Good morning!  Thought I'd share some personal pics with you today as it's not often that I actually take the time to do that lately. 

The other day, as I approached the house after retrieving the mail, I noticed what looked like white eggs under the Japanese Maple tree in the front lawn.  I scrunched my eyebrows down, thinking "this is just not possible to be eggs – they are too big and too perfectly straight up".  As I got a bit closer, it became clear that these were actually mushrooms.  Now we've lived in this house for 10 years and have had our fair share of odd things pop up now and then – including mushrooms.  But these I've never seen before.  As it was already 4:30 pm, the sun was fading fast but I just HAD to get out there and snap a shot.  So I cranked up the ISO, laid on the damp grass and grabbed this shot.  Aren't these neat looking?  They look really rough and scratchy, but are actually quite soft to the touch.

So yesterday it warmed up a bit and I decided to get a start on raking the leaves out back.  We have about 4 acres and most of it is tree-covered.  So the small area of lawn gets buried fast!  The bulk of the leaves are yellow, having fallen from the birch and cherry trees up on the hill.  It's actually quite a beautiful contrast to the dark green grass once it's all raked up.  While the boys were at school, I managed to get a decent size pile put together for them to play in.  And as soon as they saw the pile, they were super eager to run and jump and play.  I perched myself on the steps and took so many shots – trying so hard to get one of the leaves falling around them, but most attempts failed as the leaves completely covered their faces.  So on this shot, I told our youngest to hold the leaves out to his side and then throw them in the air.  That did the trick!  Leaves are seen falling and I can still see his smiling face.  SUCCESS!!

So if you made it this far, I want to thank you for humoring me as I rambled on about the pics.  I hope you can get a chance to play outside in this nice fall weather.  🙂