Bye bye, Mr. Slick.
I'm ahead by a teeny tiny little fraction. Now all I have to do is cuddle that newborn baby lead close and water it with my starving tears so it will grow up big and strong.
Plus I today found more puffballs in the neighborhood on the way to the bus stop. Just a little nesting in front of a once-proud cottage now surrounded by condos and abandoned.
I have a plan: when I find a puffball in the spore stage out in some random inconvenient field, I'm gonna stick it in a ziplock and take it home. Then I'll take it out of the ziploc and let it poot its lil spores in likely spots on the way to the bus stop. If it works, I'll end up with a little secret commute farm. People say you can't grow wild mushrooms because they're so picky, but puffballs don't seem that picky, in fact they seem to be opportunists. I think these worksite puffballs might enjoy a little diaspora action.
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5 comments:
I really enjoy your blog and enjoy reading your current discussion of the puffball mushroom. As I am a city-dweller I do not have access to the wilderness/survival information you are obviously very familiar with. Is there a fact-sheet or some resource where I can find out more information about the puffball mushroom? I found this site:
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Mushrooms.Folder/Puffball%20Overview.html
and it seems like a good place to start.
I, for one, am angry, actually, about your discussion of puffball mushrooms. You could kill or maim countless of innocent readers with your irresponsible reporting of a type of mushroom that none of your reading public has any experience with, being city-dwellers and (possibly) desert denizens.
I am also especially angry at your suggestion that the way to get more puffball mushrooms is to somehow perform some sort of "guerilla gardening" effort along your usual commuting route, in addition to collecting mushrooms already growing along this path. Not only is this irresponsible (which I will get to later) but is also inconsiderate, because many people like to keep their yards and city-owned medians swept, raked, and weeded meticulously. By scattering spores willy-nilly you are potentially interrupting someone's hard work in keeping their personal space tended. It is irresponsible because what if a poisonous anti-puffball grew up right close by your guerrilla-produced effort, and some unsuspecting city-dweller hunting for mushrooms inadvertently picked THE WRONG MUSHROOM?! I think you should consider this before taking action as you have stated.
I'll have you know, Nomx3, that those mushrooms you so carelessly harvest along your commuting route just happen to be MY puffball mushrooms, meticulously tended and cultivated in my median gardens over many years of pain-staking and, often, back-breaking labour. This year's harvest has been destroyed because of your insensitive puffball picking.
Please consider this next time you wantonly choose to pick mushrooms.
--Anonymous 1: no way would I trust any factsheet or website or even a book, you have to find a person. Mine was my father. As a pup I used to know all kinds of mushrooms, but now I know only two: puffballs and chanterelles. Those two are really obvious (except for the terrifying button amanita/puffball mixup issue). Go find a person to teach you--mushroom hunting (and eating) is really fun!
--Anonymous two: yeah, you totally shouldn't pick and eat random items you find growing in the dirt on the side of the street. If you know what puffballs are, you already know what they are without reading this excellent blog, and if you don't, I done told you twenty times to go find somebody who does. I can't kill or maim countless innocent readers by using the word "puffball" in a sentence on a blaaag nobody reads. Even if a ton of people read this thing, they'd still be safe as houses. This is because while you are correct that there are people who will go pick up a fungus they find in the road and put it in their mouths and swallow it, since those people are all infants who can't type, they are not endangered by the nomnomnomblog. I wouldn't try to sporepoot any meticulously cared-for median because nothing'll grow on those. Raking, mowing, sweeping, ciding -- they all destroy the innocent little darlings before they can become omelet-sized, sadly. Some innocent city-dweller hunting for mushrooms is less likely to pick the wrong mushroom if I seed the place with the right mushroom, and the puffball is the right mushroom. It is the rightest mushroom in the history of mushrooms.
--Rob: HAAAA-ha!
PS: Rob, you're anonymous 1 and anonymous 2, aren't you? You beastly sneak! Think I'm done eating your mushrooms? Think again, anonyrob. NONE OF YOUR MUSHROOMS ARE SAFE!
You know, all this debate about Nomx3's efforts to eat locally and cheaply by picking puffball mushrooms is a little disingenuous.
@mad4mushrooms23: I think if someone is foolish enough to farm mushroom spores in a city-owned median they should fully expect to have their bounty eaten by others. It's just a no-brainer. Plus, I think it's illegal to do that. "Don't do the crime if you can't bear to lose your time. Don't do it." You know what I'm saying? Do not plant in city-owned medians if you cannot bear to part with at least part of your crop. It's just not fair and, as I said before, illegal.
@Anon1:22pm: I'm sorry, but you do not have a right to be angry about this -- Nomx3 is very much allowed (ever heard of the 1st amendment?) to discuss her culinary predispositions to various fungi that apparently only she can identify and that are found primarily in public thoroughfares. The fact that she can not or will not help readers identify these so-called "puffballs" from the poisonous types, referring readers instead to "find" someone of some Euell Gibbons-y inclinations to do this, is beyond the scope of what her blog purports to do. I refer you to her mission statement at the top of Nom!Nom!Nom! Please read and memorize before casting aspersions as to her character.
Whew. So, all that said, I offer an alternative, given that this has become such a maelstrom of controversy in the past few days. And all over so-called "puffball" mushrooms -- shouldn't we be the teensy bit ashamed to spend so much energy on such a seemingly innocuous fungus?
Now, what I propose is this: Nomx3 can come to my yard(s) and plant spores to her heart's content. It is a yard that is not often disturbed by things like pruning shears or mowers, and mushrooms (mostly poisonous, I believe) have had the run of the place. My only proviso is that she take a moment to fully inform our family on what the puffball mushroom looks like and allows us to perhaps sample a few of them as a topping on pizza or even in an omelet.
Feel free to contact me at your convenience regarding this idea for puffball mushroom cultivation.
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