Tiny Mushrooms

I am periodically surprised that, despite rolling towards the end of my fourth decade, I still encounter things I’ve never see before.

Beside our garage is a very large old maple tree, trunk covered with moss by virtue of its own shade.

As I was passing by and looking at it I noticed a cicada (I think) carapace.

This is not something new to me, but still interesting to find - a small echo of prior activity left static. But as I was looking at it I noticed something else, just below, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before:

Seeing them there on the tree adjusted my focus to their smaller scale, and I started to look across more of the trunk - those two by the cicada shell were not alone:

And as I was scanning I came across this little batch of ladybugs, which help to give a bit of scale to these tiny fungi:

This is a little thing, of course, both figuratively and literally. But it illustrates the value in taking a moment to just slow down and look around from time to time. This is something I sometimes struggle with myself, and it’s helpful to be reminded.