Pouring with rain and blowing hard. We found a very large mushroom growing near our compost pile.
I identified it as Chlorophyllum brunneum, a nice edible that used to be called Lepiota rachodes.
However, there is a rather nasty poisonous species called Chlorophyllum molybdites that looks almost exactly the same.So I had to do a spore print. The poisonous one has greenish spores, the edible one has white spores;
Fortunately, the spore print turned out to be white, so we enjoyed the mushroom with dinner (How's that for living on the edge?) Then I had to go to Trey's first swimming lesson at our new local pool (we couldn't get him out of the water afterward). This entailed some sacrifice for me, because I had been scheduled to attend a lecture about the salmon crisis on the west coast. Now I'll have to scrounge around among acquaintances to find out what was said. Our resident killer whales eat mostly salmon (not seals as the transients do) so poor salmon returns are really bad for them, and for the bears.
On the bright side, the local Orca pods have just had two new babies. Let's hope they don't starve to death.
I am not sure whether the steep decline in salmon returns is due to overfishing or to unknown events out in the ocean, and would like an informed opinion. Will pass on what I learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment