Mushrooms in My Yard

I think mushrooms are really cool organisms. I don’t know much about identifying them; I just like looking at them. After lots of rain, they simply appear. You don’t know when, where, or what kind, but the spores are hanging around and the mushrooms just show up. 

I leave them in my yard when they appear because I like how they look. All sorts of varieties, shapes, and colors; it is all part of nature’s visual artwork. 

When I see these little creations of nature, it reminds me of walking through the woods at my childhood home; mushrooms would be scattered throughout the woods. There were also lots of books I read as a child with illustrations of fairies sitting on the tops of the mushrooms. 

We have had a lot of rain here in Charlotte lately and when I walk around in my yard I find mushrooms all over. I think they are lovely and when I see them they inspire stories. They remind me of legends, folktales, my youth, the woods, and my childhood home. In fact, I think there is even something spiritual about these lovely little things just appearing. 

Here are some pictures of the mushrooms that have appeared in my yard this week. One of them even has a little buddy attached to it; a snail is taking refuge under the umbrella of one of them. Can you find it? 

You can also get lots of information about mushrooms simply by searching for mushrooms. Here is one reference I found that you might find interesting. 

Butternut Squash

Squash. I know, the word is weird and makes your mouth turn up on one side, but I like squash. One of my all-time favorites is Butternut Squash, maybe because of the memories and the story that is attached to it. When I was a little girl for a snack my mother would cut a butternut squash in half and put it flesh side up in our gas oven to bake. It would get soft and brown and beautifully caramelized.

Mom would take it out of the oven put some butter and salt on it and smash it up in the shell. Then we would use spoons, not forks, to eat it. It was like hot ice cream, sweet and salty. When I make it in my own kitchen the memory of my mother, the old farm kitchen, and that ancient gas stove come back to me. I close my eyes when I take a bite and for a few moments, I am a little girl again.

What garden food reminds you of a story and takes you back home again? Write it down and tell your kids about it, or better yet, get that food and relive the memory with them. Tell me about it here in the comments, I’d love to hear the story.

Dreaming About Tomatoes

I was dreaming about ripe tomatoes growing in my back yard last night. It really is not so far-fetched, because I have tomato plants growing in my raised beds. The beds are unique because I made them out of an old travel car topper. I disconnected the top from the bottom, drilled some big holes for drainage and to give the worms access (don't cringe, you need the worms), filled it with dirt from the "giant's grave" (you'll have to go back to my earlier blog post about that), and my tomatoes are thriving.

Last year, my tomatoes did great but something got at them before I had a chance to harvest them. This year, my daughter's in-laws gave me four plants for an Illinois tomato (thanks Diane and Chuck) . The plants are growing well in my raised bed and have produced several green tomatoes. One day this week I am going to put some chicken wire around them in an effort to protect them from the birds and creatures that want to keep them for themselves.

The tomatoes I planted last year were heirlooms (Cherokee purple, yellow tomatoes, beefsteak) and some of the half-eaten fruit fell back into the bed and left seeds which have now started to germinate. I have loads and loads of baby tomato plants now, but I don't know what kind they are. I have to wait for them to grow and produce fruit before I know... but I do know for sure they are tomatoes.

That is how my stories work, too — there are all sorts of seeds of thought that I write down on paper and I have to wait for those seeds to germinate and grow to know what I've got. Sometimes I know what I have, but I still have to let it grow and produce fruit before it is ready to go on stage and be shared. Once the story is shared, there is potential for others to grab some of the seeds and they can grow their own stories.

I dreamed about tomatoes last night. What seeds of story are you growing?

Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens

The beauty of butterflies; I do enjoy watching them flutter about. Steven, my husband, knows how much I enjoy them and he happened to see that the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens in Belmont, NC, had a butterfly pavilion exhibit.

We went. It was so much fun!

I could try to describe it but I do believe in this case the photos I took can speak for themselves.

Enjoy.

The Giant's Grave

I have a seriously big mulch pile in my driveway, and a giant's grave is in my back yard. I hear you: "A giant's grave?" Yep. 

Remember the story of Jack and the beanstalk? Well, when Jack cut down the beanstalk, and the giant landed in my backyard...

I'm a storyteller. It's all about the story.

So, what is the giant's grave really? When the houses were built in our neighborhood, much of the construction debris was buried in our backyard. As time has passed, that debris has broken down and left a couple of large sink holes. We’ve just kept filling the sink holes with leaves, branches and garden debris. 

To tidy it up we put wood chips on top, which brings me to the seriously big mulch pile in my driveway. I get mulch for free. When a neighbor is having a tree taken down, I usually ask for the chipped wood. More often than not, the landscape companies are glad to drop the chips in my driveway, because it saves them from paying a charge at the local dump. It saves me money, because I don't have to buy mulch. 

After years of putting all this organic debris on the giant's grave, I’ve been left with some really rich soil. You’d think that I would have finished filling up those sink holes by now, and actually I have. I just keep unfilling them and using the soil in other places in my garden. I suppose I could just leave it there and let the grass grow, but then what would happen to the story about the giant's grave?