Morels

Mushrooms as they emerge from the ground, are one of nature's small miracles. The lawn and woods will be mushroom-free and suddenly after some moist weather will poke up, seemingly overnight. As I was walking around my small city lot quite a few years back, I noticed a mushroom that looked like a brain on top of a stalk. I studied it - thinking "morel..." but certainly didn't pick it or eat it.

I've mushroom hunted before, many years ago, with field guide and made spore prints of the caps. What I found out is that many of the edible shrooms have toxic look-alikes - so I wasn't going to risk it on my first found morel.

Then the following year when more morels showed up - this time in the front yard I was talking to a friend who happened to be an avid morel-hunter. She agreed to come out to ID them and I said she could keep the harvest for her boyfriend's morel soup or steak and morels. Both of them came out and found quite a few with several being quite large. We decided that the morels were feeding on the dead elm roots from the tree cut down in the front yard.

This last year an elm tree in the back yard became fodder for the morels with bunches of them showing up last spring. I now eat them and find them tasty sauteed with home-grown asparagus in a bit of butter. How I love a garden and a Creator that produces free food for the finding.