lurking in the garden

yesterday it was sunny so i popped out for a last round of leaf gathering for dyeing ...... and i found these weird fungi in a planter
they didn't look like that in the planter, i picked them and snapped them on the leaves i found - i'd never seen any fungi like this before so i looked them up and it turns out they are Collared Earthstar, the central bulby bit holds the spores - they usually grow on leaf litter around beech trees, no beech here so they must have arrived as spores on some of our logs
the leaves got bundled up with fabric and are currently marinating on the stove, i'm surprised at how much colour they are building up after only a few hours -i held on to one bundle, which is being kept warm and damp in the hope of encouraging some nice decay before immersion - i'll show the results if they are interesting