I learned a new word today: Deliquesce.
Look at it. Let it roll off your tongue. Doesn’t it have an air of grace, of mystery? If I had to guess at its meaning, I’d picture something delicious, something elegant. Something decidedly French.
The mushrooms in these photos, if I correctly understand what I Googled when I looked them up, are absorbing the moisture in the air and quite literally liquefying into a slimy black fluid loaded with spores.
They’re deliquescing.
Oh.
Well.
I still thought them beautiful, though, the way the Earth is cleverly and intricately and efficiently beautiful, with nothing wasted, as it ensures the wheel of life just keeps turning.