Miss Sadie and the Cowboy like warmish rainy days. I think there are more scents for them to read. I’m not sure—my nose gets stuffy and I can’t smell anything—but they seem to be following a compelling story. They sniff, I look around and take pictures of interesting things, and all of us get home wet and muddy and content.
Pull on your boots and come along. Maybe you can help me identify some of the macrofungi. (I just learned that word. Can you tell? See the useful Forest Service brochure, Field Guide to Common Macrofungi in Eastern Forests and Their Ecosystem Functions.)
These were on the woods path behind the house. The first two examples are different sizes of the same fungus (big ones, with my hand for scale, and smaller ones, attractively disposed among the leaves).
The next examples might be the same thing, but I don’t think so. They were more colorful and more “ruffled.” (How’s that for a sophisticated identification marker?)
Then we went to the swamp. It was beautiful in the rain.
Finally we found the one mushroom I can identify, right on the side of the road. It was a poor thing, well past its prime, but it was the only morel I found this spring, so I brought it home and thought about sautéing it. Then I thought better of that and tossed it out. Wait until next year.
Torch Lake Views 
dawnkinster
June 8, 2016
I’ve never found nor tasted a morel. I would have eaten it. I think.
Gerry
June 8, 2016
You wouldn’t have. It was very unappetizing. Someday you might enjoy a visit to the Boyne City Morel Festival (early May). The Rowe Inn in Ellsworth always features morels in May, too.
Carsten
June 9, 2016
The swamp seems to be a good place for a small photo hunting.
I’ve been looking for morels in many years – without finding a single one 😦
I have no bids on the type of your beautiful mushrooms…
Gerry
June 9, 2016
Carsten! The swamp is irresistible just now. No morels in the swamp, though – they grow in the woods. Or wherever else they want to of course. I don’t find very many unless I go with wily friends who blindfold me until we get wherever it is we’re going!
shoreacres
June 9, 2016
There’s a morel festival? Oh, my. I remember morels: dredged in flour, salt and pepper, and sauteed in butter. There’s nothing better — although I’ll confess that “sauteed in butter” can make a good number of foods pretty tasty.
It certainly is looking lush around there. What a difference a few degrees and a little rain can make. Do you have the big fungus called chicken of the woods? I’ve never seen one, but I know some people who often find them (Massachusetts) and just as often cook them, with great glee (Virginia).
Gerry
June 9, 2016
There are several morel festivals, but the one in Boyne City is my particular favorite. We do have the big fungus called chicken in the woods, and in fact that might well be what the ruffly orange one in the swamp on the tree base is. I must see if I can get Arleen Westhoven over there to look at it. We would never want to trust my mushroom identification skills for anything but morels.
Your comment made me think of chickens running through the woods of Massachusetts and fleeing the cooking pots of Virginia. Now I can’t get them out of my head.
Martha J
June 9, 2016
It makes my mouth water just to read the word morel – or maybe it was seeing the name Rowe Inn. Someone told me they can now grow morels in greenhouses in a process that MSU developed. Either that, or I had a dream that happened. I may have macrofungi brain. Loved the pictures.
Gerry
June 9, 2016
I am fond of morels myself, and doubly fond of morels prepared at the Rowe Inn. I have heard tell of cultivated morels, but haven’t seen them. It sounds like a good food to raise, but finding them in the wild is too much fun to miss. Even hunting for them and NOT finding them is fun.
P.j. grath
June 9, 2016
The swamp does look lovely. I’m wondering about mosquitoes, though. ??? And were those BUTTERCUPS??? And I am never sure about macro- and micro-. The former sounds BIG to me, the latter tiny, but then people say macro-whatever to refer to something I consider small, and it throws me, every time.
Gerry
June 9, 2016
Thank you. It was chilly enough that the mosquitoes were not about when we were there. (We had a warm muggy day recently and they chased us right out of the woods behind the house.) Those were indeed buttercups. I’ll go back to the original photo and crop out a patch to show you.
Macro- is big and micro- small, begging the question of compared to what exactly. The macro lens business confused me until I decided that it was a technique to enlarge the image of tiny things. I’ve settled on that notion anyway.
We could submit a question to A Way with Words, eh?
Gerry
June 9, 2016
Here you go. Sort of closeup that shows the buttercups better. The swamp is full of them.
Craig Smith
June 9, 2016
Great pictures. The other day PBS showed an elegant truffle auction in Tuscany, with the fungi being treated like Raphaels.
Gerry
June 9, 2016
Thank you. In Torch Lake Township we considered treating Raphaels like morels, but they came out rubbery so we gave it up. My preference in truffles runs to the chocolate sort. I pondered whether Miss Sadie and the Cowboy could be trained to find either the mushroom truffles or the chocolate ones. No.
tootlepedal
June 9, 2016
We are still waiting for rain and there are no fungi to be seen at present so I was glad to see yours.
Gerry
June 9, 2016
Thank you. I was glad to find them, and to watch everything turn green, green, green.
tootlepedal
June 10, 2016
This is a good time of year.
WOL
June 11, 2016
Edible ‘shrooms are pretty popular with the resident thumb-bearer. I agree that sauteing in butter does wonders for many things, shrooms included. The thumbless one, however, is curiously uninterested in anything that is not his preferred brand of kibble, actual tuna, or a tuna flavored Greenie. Most of my cats have been opportunists when it comes to food. I’ve heard tell of them even eating grapefruit*, but not this one.
As for the jigsaws, I love to work them. I had to go virtual when the supply of real ones with nice pictures dried up. (I’ve been known to work them, then frame them.) I primarily use the Jigsaw Planet site to take breaks while I’m working transcription, to give my eyes a treat and my ears a rest.
* http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/jon1int-1
Gerry
June 11, 2016
Well. The story of the grapefruit-eating cat was very entertaining. (I read only the first page of the interview.)
Arleen Westhoven says the orange fungus on the base of the tree in the swamp is “definitely a sulfur shelf Laetiporus sulphureus.” She is going to investigate the others more closely.
Karma
June 11, 2016
Dogs who could seek out truffles of the chocolate variety probably wouldn’t be terribly useful, I wouldn’t think. Most dogs I’ve known do not care at all that chocolate is very bad for them and swallow it down gleefully.
Thanks for the tour through the swamp. I bet all the smell of “green” was intoxicating.
Gerry
June 11, 2016
You are welcome to tour with us anytime. I’m sure the dogs found all the scents intoxicating. As for me, I have spring allergies and have a hard time smelling much of anything. Sometimes this is a good thing.
Martha
June 11, 2016
Pretty, pretty swamp. I’ve not been anywhere swampy or adventurous this spring. Working where I do is vegetative enough for now.
Have to remark about the idea of dogs eating chocolate- it’s not just bad for them, it’s toxic. Candy with more sugar than actual chocolate will just make them fat and diabetic. Dark chocolate will hospitalize them.
Gerry
June 11, 2016
Hello Martha! What a pleasure to see you here during your really, really busy season. Hope all the vegetation is bursting with health and beauty.
I was, of course, joking about the dogs sniffing out chocolate truffles for me. My vet agrees that chocolate is toxic to dogs, although it takes quite a bit to be truly dangerous. My sister about had a heart attack when their dog managed to reach and eat most of a really rich dark chocolate cake while they were gone. Fortunately Ralph was an enormous golden retriever and suffered no ill effects. The Cowboy is a little guy, and I hate to think what would happen to him. It’s always good to be reminded.
Martha
June 12, 2016
My sister had a beagle x that got into a bag of Tootsie Pops (we were very young then…) and ate the entire bag- leaving the sticks. Of course, Tootsie Pops don’t include high cocoa content…just sugar and some brown thing inside. But she survived with little more than several bathroom breaks.
Anyway, I knew you knew. I just had to shove my comment out there for anyone who didn’t give the idea much thought. But I should know that you have thoughtful readers!
Gerry
June 12, 2016
Wow-poor beagle. Now that I think of it, probably poor sister!
I treasure my thoughtful readers. You teach me stuff, keep me on my toes, tell me wonderful stories and make me smile. Thank you.
marander@tds.net
June 12, 2016
Hi Gerry, I am finally back in MI for a week, and I have a couple pictures for you. No nmes on most of them, but will contact one of the little sisters in a family to see if she can help me with names. How do I find you? We are staying in Kewadin, leaving on the 18th. My cell is 715-560-0269 Smiles, Marilyn Anderson
marander@tds.net
June 12, 2016
Gerry, can,t open your response, could you send it as a new note? thanks, Marilyn
Yvonne Stephens
March 29, 2017
Beautiful
Gerry
March 29, 2017
Thank you.