Nature is Never Spent

It's been a rainy early summer. In May we had a total of 6.5 inches of rain, which is only a little more than average, but the precipitation was mostly spread out among a lot of individual showers and long, relatively gentle rainy days. In June, we've had some storms as well as long rains, and I think we may have about two inches so far. It's prime mushroom weather!

Someday I'll learn to identify all of these beauties. ( Mushroom gallery )

It's been raining a lot lately -- rural roads closed, covered with water, lowlands flooded, that sort of thing. I can't complain, because who knows when the rain will stop (and stop, and stop, and stay stopped some more...) Walking in the woods today, I found some beautiful and interesting fungi growing on a chunk of rotten oak. They were shaped like goblets, with a fringe around the rims, and they were actually filling with rain. I wasn't surprised to learn later that a common name is "black cup fungus." The Latin name, Urnula craterium, seems a little redundant, but it's very descriptive. My favorite, though, is the delicious nickname "devil's urn."



In other fungus (okay, half-fungus) news, there's also this "moss" in certain places in the woods. I discovered it when I started exploring a lot as a child. There are certain places where it grows, and only in those places. As a tactile experience, I found it very attractive: when it's wet, it's very spongy and springy, almost like a loofah of soft rubber. (That's a little misleading as a comparison; I didn't hear the word "loofah" until years after I first discovered the moss.) When it's dry, it's brittle and it will crumble between your fingers. I always thought I'd like to gather it and make a bed in the forest, but I was afraid it wouldn't grow back if I took it away.

As it turns out, this was reindeer moss. It's a lichen -- which I should have known, had I thought about it, because it's really not like moss at all. And reindeer do like to eat it, in places where reindeer live. Apparently it's high in carbs and vitamin A and if you pulverize it, it makes a decent food thickener. Good stuff! Around here, there are no reindeer, but local human foragers collect it to sell to florists, and it may be endangered.

I'm at the farm today, and the weather is still overcast and not hot. In fact, I think they got some genuine rain here, because the leaves on the ground are soft and quiet rather than crisp and crunchy. There are also some mushrooms! I love the way they spring up from underneath the leaf litter, pushing things out of their way as they come.



The fall flowers have sprung up all along the dirt road in the woods. They were just waiting for it to be cool enough, and rain.