Monday, December 1, 2008

Mushroom Monday


In the spirit of Silent Sunday and Wordless Wednesday, I've designated today... Mushroom Monday!

We've been amazed and delighted with the incredible number and diversity of the mushrooms and fungus we are finding around our property.

This is a wee mushroom forest:

These are just wee mushrooms:

They are very determined growers - nothing stands in their way:

I'm fascinated with all the different types:

This looks like the kind of mushroom a little gnome would live under:

I laughed out loud when I saw this one. It grew so fast, the dirt on top didn't even have a chance to fall off:

Here's a chicken to show the perspective on its size:

Here's just a chicken:

Here's another perspective: my husband's foot!:

What in the world is this?

It loooks like pickled ginger! What an amazing color:

Look! Fungus on fungus:

Everywhere I looked, there was a new type of mushroom to see:

This one is still standing tall, despite his brothers having fallen:

This partially hidden beauty is known as the "cauliflower" mushroom. (Not really, but it looks like it, doesn't it?):

The mushroom on the left was practically glowing:

Can you see these two little guys? These are very special, donkey-dung mushrooms:

Anybody else out there fascinated with mushrooms?:

Even after seeing so many different kinds, I'd suddenly come upon a variety that would stun me with its beauty:

Hee, hee:

There you have it: Mushroom Monday!

28 comments:

  1. Yes Danni that one with the dirt hat cracks me up! There is one thing that will stop mushrooms in their tracks....SNOWWWWW!!
    :-(

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  2. I think the orange one is called 'orange peel fungus'. I'm not certain though.

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  3. Beautiful pictures! I love mushrooms. They are so amazing and mysterious. Do you think any of them are edible?

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  4. We wound up with the bird's nest type in our garden this year, and I have been fascinated ever since. We don't get a whole lot of them because we don't get half as much rain as you do, but I think they are the neatest creepy little things ever!

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  5. Growing up in England in the countryside we would always find loads of mushrooms and toadstools. We had a similar damp climate to yours.

    My Dad has a passion for mushrooms and would often fry up the edible ones for breakfast. We used to get huge white outer-spacey looking ones called "puffballs" that could grow to be bigger than a soccer ball. Dad used to fry those up in slices. Mum would never let us have any though because she was convinced we would all get poisoned! :)

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  6. Funny you should mention these. I've been noticing a lot of mushrooms around lately too. Must be all the damp weather. I wish I could tell the edible ones from the poisonous ones.

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  7. I love mushroom Monday! Mushrooms are so beautiful!

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  8. I dig mushrooms too. A new friend is teaching me about mushroom hunting while I teach her about beekeepeing. It's amaziong what all is out there when you are looking for it! I never noticed before I started looking!

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  9. I love mushrooms! I have no idea what any of them are called, but it is so fun to take pictures of them and admire all the shapes, sizes, and colors. You have some good ones!

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  10. That is an amazing variety of mushrooms. We get quite a few here in Michigan, but I have never seen one close the size of the big fella with the dirt hat!

    I know how to distinguish a morel from others and we find and devour those.

    My white crested polish hens suffer from pecking too. The other eight do not, so it must be something abut the color or thin-ness at the top?

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  11. What a great mushroom post! I'm fascinated with them too. They are so elegant, primal, beautiful!

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  12. I love your mushroom Monday post, your pictures and your humor. You made me smile this morning. We have various mushrooms here in the CA foothills, but not nearly as many as you do in the wetter climate up there in OR. I don't know anything about wild mushrooms, so I never eat any that I find. Too afraid of getting poisoned.

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  13. You're making me wish I'd gone ahead and bought a morel or other mushroom kit for the back yard! (We have our own assortment of 'shrooms around here, but not the reliably edible kind.)

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  14. That IS a lot of mushrooms. All different shapes and sizes. That one was almost as big as Jim,s foot.

    Im gonna tell S that you secretly dedicated this post to him....his love of the mushroom runs very deep.

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  15. Do you know which one are edible? Some are so big. I would love to eat mushrooms out of our yard. MellowMushroom is our favorite Pizza joint here in Boone.

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  16. I have a perfect picture for "Mushroom Monday". I just took it the other day when we were out tipping. We have losts of differnt kinds here. Someday I'll learn which ones are edible, MM has been doing some research on that. Cool pics!

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  17. Interesting. I love them in YOUR yard. LOL I'm scared my dog or kids will eat them. I have them popping up all summer. Can't stand it. I'm out with the pooper scooper picking and getting rid of them. I've no clue which are poisonus. I tried salt but it killed the grass too. I'll send them your way :)

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  18. That yellow "pickled ginger" one looks an awful lot like "chicken of the woods"... tastes like chicken!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus It normally grows directly out of trees, though... is there a stump underneath?

    Maybe ask your chickens if that's it... they should know, right? :-)

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  19. Happy Mushroom Monday! Amazing large variety, eh?

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  20. Hi! I'm a secret stalker of your blog and I left you something on mine. :) I hope you'll check it out.

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  21. Chicken and mushroom...the picture of the week! I guess we can say all our rain is good for something, the moss and shrooms love it!!!

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  22. Yor Mushrooms make me think of "Alice in Wonderland" all you need is a Cheshire Cat.

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  23. I'm a mushroom fan too. :) When I was visiting my sister in Florence, OR I spent a good hour out in her woods taking pics of her mushrooms. That was the first time I had seen the red ones with the white polka dots....I never thought they were real! I heard if you ingested those it was a fine line between hallucinations and death. She doesn't have any animals so she doesn't have to worry.

    I loved the one that grew so fast and the fact that it can support the front end of a chicken! :)

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  24. The goatmother and goatfather find mushrooms fascinating. I find them kind of boring, but what do I know. The orange one, I think, is called 'Witches Butter'. But then, I am no expert. :) Give me a good Peanut any day.

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  25. Reading your blog and title makes me hear that Bangles song in my head, "It's just another Mushroom Monday!"

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  26. I just love mushrooms! Anette's mother sent us a package of dried mushrooms two weeks ago and now we're enjoying solar cooked Swedish mushroom casserole in Africa!

    Greetings from Niger,
    Esther

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  27. Yep I have noticed how many mushrooms there seem to be this year. We have a big old patch of them down by the hen house and one of those cauliflower looking ones on the end of one of our logs. It is huge. I love the photos, especially the dirt hat one.

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  28. Thats amazing you have sooo many mushrooms growing, it would be great if you could eat them if there were edible :)

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