Morel Season

On a brief after supper walk last night Leah discovered...a Foozie mushroom!

(Context: when we added on to our house, we hired a contractor from our church to do the framing because Matt couldn't do it all himself. He and the kids began an inside joke where they call each other "Foozie." When he was here working at the very end of the project, he saw a mushroom growing in the mulch of one of our gardens which he identified as a morel - and he and his wife both really enjoy hunting and eating morels! As much as we enjoy eating what grows in our yard, and even though I do appreciate mushrooms, I'm not quite brave enough...yet...to try eating my own mushrooms.)

In past years, the morels have grown in the mulch right around the base of our old elm tree that didn't make it through the construction, so this was the first time that we'd seen any out in the grass, and, Oh! were they out there!

When Foozie and his wife stopped by late the next day, they filled one and a half collanders with little morels, leaving the very small ones to grow a bit so they could come back for a second harvest in a few days. The kids are guarding that piece of lawn meticulously, making sure we don't inadvertently step on any of Foozie's mushrooms.

The dead elm itself provides a perfect perch from which to supervise the harvesters.