Solstice Flowers and Hookah Smoking Caterpillars

A splendid day for a solstice. In preparation for the ceremonies I made a pretty good sized "flower". I'm getting pretty good at these. It took a couple of hours and held together pretty well. I put a stone square around it, which ultimately helped to keep it from being walked all over. I finished it off on the solstice and adjusted the square in order to have the corner align with the setting sun. It turns out that I anticipated a bit incorrectly, but you can't really tell from the photo. So I'm going to pretend I was in sync with the cosmos. After the setting of the sun the fatted calf was slaughtered. The augers read the entrails, burnt offerings were made, the dances were danced, the fasts broken, the visions visioned, the oracles oracled, the coracles coracled, the fish smacked the water and the dish ran away with the spoon.
And so ended the l o n g e s t day of the year.
In a footnote, just after girding my loins but before descending to the place of sacrifice, there in the sacred grove at the top of the bluff, I came upon a fungus of immense proportions. The fattest man in the world would be delighted to have a dinner plate this big! As fungi go, it was one of the biggest I've ever seen. A movement in the grass just nearby attracted my attention and when I investigated I was surprised to find a sizeable caterpillar dragging a hookah behind him. Subsequent discussions revealed that he was leaving his mushroom behind as it was too large, expensive to heat and frankly he was tired of the life of conspicuous consumption he was living. In light of current environmental realities he was moving to a more modest shroom where he could live in a less destructive manner. Unfortunately, while crossing the parking lot he was run over by a Hummer.