Morning fairies in the garden

Whew, hump day has passed. We have officially made it past the middle of the work week yay!
I hope you all had a pleasant day today 🙂
Eugin here and I wanted to share our little morning surprise with you.

Amy and I work at Wholesale Warranties together and honestly, we love it!
We wake up together, get ready together and carpool to work together and I find much joy in getting to spend my time with my wife!
Well today, we woke up and found a few visitors in our azalea training pot.

 With a little bit of research, we found out that these little guys are called Coprinopsis atramentaria, or more commonly called inky caps. How fun right??
But why are they called inky caps?
Take a look from a different angle and you may see:

As the fruiting body of the inky cap matures, it begins to liquefy.
Sounds kind of gross but it does this in the attempt to release its spores into the wind. Pretty ingenious method of reproduction if you ask me!
So if you can see on the left side of the above image, you can see that one of the stalks grew tall against the wall of the tub and then pretty much exploded; leaving an inky imprint left behind. Artists actually used to use the stuff to write/paint with!
These inky caps are a welcome visitor to our garden as they perform an essential role in nature.
Inky caps are saprophytes. This means that they are the first organisms to arrive when matter needs to be decomposed.
When organic matter decomposes, saprophytes break down the matter so that it can be consumed by other organisms. In this way, saprophytes help to add more organic matter to the surroundings. Thanks little guys!
But other than that, Amy and I think they are kinda cute!

The inky caps have all exploded so there are none left in the tub. I hope they come back tomorrow 😉