Oklahoma saw a late spring this year, and just in the last couple of weeks have we started receiving some of those "April showers" that supposedly bring on the "May flowers" and henceforth. I planted my garden weeks ago and have relied on my trusty garden hose to keep it watered, but for several days we saw some continuous rain amounting to a few inches in the end.

I've seen some inky cap mushrooms pop up here and there since my entire garden is covered in a nice thick layer of wood chip mulch, but as the rains kept going they really seemed to find their happy place. One morning I came outside to witness this - an entire area of the garden covered in these little shrooms. It's odd how quickly they change. I took these photos about 30 minutes to an hour after I first spotted them. Initially, they still looked fresh and the caps were not curling upward yet. By photo time they had started to deteriorate some and A noticeable change in color was apparent. I came out an hour later and they had disintegrated into a mere memory. Had I not seen them earlier I would not have known of their presence, save for a close observation of tiny black fibers across the mulch.

I love the textures in this top photo - this is one of my favorite attributes of fungi: the textures. So intricate, despite how small they are.

And now it's raining again...