Thursday, May 29, 2008

So, I had sixteen graves


to take care of this year for Memorial Day. Because of cold weather, I had to wait until the Friday before I could start to deliver/plant flowers.

On Tuesday I was back at the cemeteries covering the flowers I planted and removing the ones I had set out in pots because of frost and freeze warnings. After work on Wednesday, I redelivered and uncovered. I went home, watched the news and was informed that they had miscalculated (imagine that) and the temps would dip below freezing again that night. Geez, I checked at noon and they said a low of 40. Back to the cemeteries I went. Thanks to the gas prices, I lost pretty much all my profits for the year. Grrrrrr. But hey, the flowers survived, the graves look great and that’s the important thing, right?

A little off topic but in my front yard is an enormous Mulberry tree that my grandmother planted. I can remember her telling me to never, ever plant anything in the spring until the leaves sprout on that tree. She said that Mulberry trees know when the last frost of the year is going to be so if you see leaves on them you can safely plant even if the calendar says it's too early. Guess what? So far, that tree has never been wrong. I checked it yesterday and could not find a single tiny green leaf. I planned to plant my garden this weekend but if I don’t see any leaves by then I will definitely wait.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Success!


Over the memorial weekend, in between cemetery visits, I found 21 huge
mushrooms. I cooked and ate them all in one sitting. What a wonderful meal that was – the mushrooms along with grilled, fresh picked asparagus, grilled shrimp, and beer. A feast for a king I tell you.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

This mushroom season sucked

for me, at least. I hiked miles and miles and found less than 50 this year. Oh well, at least I got my exercise. I’m probably wasting my time but I still plan to look one more week before giving up for good.

I saw more deer than I did mushrooms. This was the only one who would pose for me.




I also stumbled upon this bad boy. It's a snapping turtle, with a shell about a foot in diameter, for those who don't know their turtles. He was trying to hide from me in a rainwater filled tractor rut.



And the best part of the week? I saw a bobcat. Twice. It was probably the same cat but on two different days. He walked right in front of the cabin in broad daylight. Of course, my camera was not ready either time. I am going to try putting bait out to see if I can get a picture of him.

Back to the hunt.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Vacation

I am heading out to spend an entire week mushroom hunting. I am not sure that I will be able to survive without a computer. In fact, I'm sure of it. I will have to locate a library somewhere.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

I am not a prejudiced person

but I sure do wish there was a way to set an "English" default so that when I click on "next blog" I am able to actually read the next blog. I swear that sometimes I have to go through 10 - 15 blogs before I come to another one that I can read. Google owns Blogger for Pete's sake! Google has the best search engine in the world and Google Earth, but cannot figure out a way for us to filter out the ones we want (or not want) to scroll through?

Monday, May 5, 2008

I have mushrooms on the brain

It’s morel mushroom season here in Michigan. This time of year, I think about those little bastards morning to night. I spend hours and hours and hours out looking for them.

To be honest, they taste great, but if you convert the time I spend looking for them into money, I could buy mountains of regular old buttons and Portobello’s. And, I could fry them in a pound of butter like I do morels and they would taste (almost) as good.

Case in point: On my first hunt this season, I spent 5 hours hiking and found just this one tiny mushroom.



I don’t know if you have ever looked for morels but it is a frustrating hobby. You can read books on how to find them, talk to other mushroom hunters, and walk for days without finding a single mushroom. They're hard to find for many reasons. Here are the main ones:

Looking too early.
Looking too late.
Not enough rain.
Somebody beat you to the spot and already picked them.
Looking in the wrong areas. Or looking in the right spot but one or more of the other reasons above is the culprit.

So, if you look and don’t find any, you can’t just say: Oh well, no mushrooms here. You have to go back a week later in case you were too early. Or, a day or two later after a rain because they can pop up overnight after it rains and you have to beat anyone else that may look in “your” spot. And, you have to keep going back until you are absolutely positive you will not find anything this year. Then you repeat it all the next year in case it was because someone had beaten you to the spot.

I have found spots where I have picked bags of them and, in subsequent years, return to find only a few or worse, none. And yes, I pick them the right way – using scissors or a knife to cut the stem. I have also stumbled across masses of mushrooms in areas that I have walked through for years on the way to my normal spots. Were they always growing there and I didn’t notice them all those years?

So far this year, I have spent approximately 15 hours hunting and have found a grand total of 25 mushrooms. I have found some other interesting things like one of these:


And one of these:


And many of these:


The season has just started so I am still hopeful. I always start out hopeful.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

They buried my aunt yesterday



She died in December but this cemetery doesn't bury people in the winter, so they waited until the ground thawed.

I found out something very interesting from speaking to the funeral director at the burial. They do not store "winter" bodies in a freezer. Or a refrigerator. They just put them in the basement of the funeral home. And yes, if you purchase a non-sealing casket (as we did for her) you will be able to detect the smell of decomposing flesh. The funeral home has a filtered ventilation system to take care of the odors in the basement.

I told him that I couldn't smell anything and he said that was because they had arrived over an hour ahead of time so the smells had dissipated. Hmmmm.