Fairy Rings

We appparently had some other visitors night before last---fairies! When I went out to get the paper yesterday, I saw two large "fairy circles" or that's what my mother used to call them when they'd appear in the yard on the farm. These two big circles were made up of cream and brown colored mushrooms--I have no idea what the type of mushrooms they are--and I'm not tasting them to see!

I looked around for the fairies, but they had apparently left before I got there.

I walked by the large magnolia tree and noticed that the seed pods were beginning to mature. They're now sort of pink and beginning to form the seeds which will be bright red when they mature. The tree is absolutely full of these "cones" which are 3 or 4 inches long and a couple of inches across.

This native magnolia (called the "grandiflora") keeps its leaves all year round--well, actually, it DROPS its leaves all year round! You have to rake underneath the tree every day the whole year if you want to keep your yard free of leaves, but we just let them drop and stay there. The limbs grow naturally close to the ground so the falling leaves are not really a problem if you let them grow that way--most people cut off the low limbs and then you have the problem with the leaves. I love the tree so much though, it's really not a problem for me--nothing says American South as much as the magnolia tree does.