Tiny bonnet

R and I had a bit of a curate's egg of a day with the Boy Wonder. He was delighted to see us when we arrived, and if anything even more delighted to  see the back of us when we left, and in between we enjoyed some charming interludes; but there were also times when we found him difficult to deal with. I struggled particularly - on top of the fact that I'm still pretty post-viral, I slept badly last night, and all my normal strategies for avoiding conflict seemed to desert me. 

At one point I was trying to persuade him into a clean pair of trousers, and he decided that it would be amusing instead to barricade himself behind the rubbish and recycling bins in the kitchen, and refuse to come out. Which is nothing out of the ordinary for a mischievous small boy, but after just a few seconds I felt my temper slipping - so rather than shout, I simply said, "I can't deal with this right now," and turned to walk out of the room. At once he pushed the bins aside, ran to R, and said "Here I am Granddad! You can help me with my trousers." And then, to me: "I want Granddad to help me, Grandma. Not you. Because you are Not Kind."

Sheesh. That's me told.

One of the fun sections of the day was when when went to the park. The Boy didn't want me photographing him though, so I went off to look for fungi instead, leaving the menfolk at the swings. This is one of the bonnet fungi, maybe 4mm across the cap and 6mm tall, growing in moss on the bark of a felled tree stump. A few of of the Mycenaceae are easily identified by colour and the substrate they colonise, but many more require microscopic examination for a firm identification. And I'm no mycologist. But I'm going to take a punt on this one being the Steely Bonnet, Mycaena pseudocorticola, which is an autumn and winter species that inhabits the mossy bark of deciduous trees. 

Mycaena pseudocorticola rarely grows to more than 1cm across. It starts out this blue-grey colour, but quite rapidly turns brown, at which point I'd guess that it's harder to spot, as well as more difficult to identify. It's a saprophytic fungus, which means that it consumes dead and dying organic matter, but it's also found on the bark of living trees and it's not clear whether or not it penetrates deeply enough to cause them any damage. There's more about it here.