Our Back Yard Mushrooms

Several rainy and stormy days have left us southwest Virginians with downed trees, swollen streams and soggy lawns, as well as a lot of cleanup work to do. But Cheria and I also have something else: several wild mushrooms growing in our back yard.

These mushrooms are quite different from the ones usually seen in the woods around here. Some are large, bowl-shaped mushrooms that bear a striking resemblance to birdbaths, while others, like the ones featured in today's picture, are simply round balls mounted on fat stems that look sort of like miniature water towers.

Mushrooms are very interesting organisms. Since they are fungi instead of plants, they only grow on and feed off of decaying organic material, not soil. My dad used to tell us about a job he once had hauling horse manure from farms in northern Virginia to the mushroom farms across the Potomac in Maryland. He and the other drivers drove their foul-smelling trucks right through the streets of Washington, DC - creating quite a stink (literally) that raised a lot of eyebrows among the stuffed suits walking about the city.

Dad loved to tell that story, and every time I see a mushroom growing somewhere I immediately think about him. I miss dad's stories - and I miss him. I'm sure that when we meet up with him in heaven some day he'll have plenty of new ones to tell.

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