I've decided to leave Fridays for fungal stuff. Sounds worse than it is. From the 1800's people were writing about mushrooms being frightening -- that they were toxic, diseased, horrifying organisms best kept away from. And that fear keeps on going, even though there is a LOT of information out there to help you identify a mushroom. People's first reaction is that they're scared they'd be poisoned, but I'd like it to be 'cool, maybe I'll start with one and get some books and go online and try to identify it'. Curiosity will not kill the cat - curiosity with misinformation will. The other weird thing is when you tell people 'oh, that's not really toxic, it's a myth', they look at you funny like you're not telling the truth and shut the conversation down rather than saying 'oh, really? Tell me more?'.

But there are a few people who are uber keen to learn. Rose, for example, greedily took my pink oyster mushrooms and made a laksa faster than I could finish the sentence: 'would you like some ......'. And Andrea, who bought two buckets and doesn't mind that it's taking weeks for the blues to fruit because 'it helps her learn all about the process'. And Tracey, who is the only mushroom lover in her family, keen to pick saffies with me when the season starts.

Grow Mushrooms - Let's Use this Hashtag?

So my brown oyster mushrooms have just started pinning. They're faster than the blues that were done weeks ago and must be waiting for the cooler weather. By next week's Fungi Friday post I'm sure I would have cooked some!

I thought I'd start using the tag #growmushrooms here on Hive to connect other mushroom growers and distinguish us from the foragers - not that I don't forage as well! But thought it could be fun. I might even create a special banner - what do you think?

No More Butts - Thanks to Oyster Mushrooms?

But oyster mushrooms are cooler than that - in Australia the environmental group 'NO More Butts' that works on getting rid of cigarette butts (which can take decades to decompose in landfill). A third of the hundred or so chemicals inside of butts are toxic to sea life1 and have been found in the stomachs of birds, turtles, whales and fish. We have 'no smoking on the beach' signs on the coast here with fines if you get caught (unlikely!) but of course people still do. If this program works, collecting butts from cafes and so on, it'll be an awesome move.

And mushrooms could save us in an apocalypse as well, even if the plants died off - they'd grow off rotting wood and plant matter and even one log would sustain us for some time. An even better reason to grow mushrooms, no? Have you started your mushroom growing journey?²

Dissolution

Some of you might remember the time I thought I was going to die in a remote forest surrounded by fungi, and instead of getting scared I just lay down in the pine needles and felt this sense of oneness with all life, and this kind of happiness that I was going to be food for fungi? It's that this AI image reminded me of this week as I played around with fungi related prompts, trying to achieve a certain look.

I've been really trying to create an image which shows a mushroom goddess playing with the natural world at her whim, in total comfort with the world around her. The fungi are as much her playthings as she will become food for them, or else she is already a ghost, dissolved into the forest, and we can only see her when we are lucky enough or if we look hard enough. Some of the images take my breath away, some are darn ridiculous - and I'm just accepting that AI really loves to put strange hats on people, particularly mushroom hats, just because you've used the word 'mushroom'. I suppose they DO make good hats. You just have to find one large enough.

I was really happy with these images this week. I still am not sure what I will do with them, but it gives my brain something to do when I'm physically exhausted. If you pop over to my instagram, Hive account@myco_whispers, you can see both real and imagined mushroom related things over there. Please give me a follow!

I imagine after Easter I'll be too busy with REAL mushrooms in the forest to create these imagined landscapes - but for now, that's all I have got.

Please share your mushroom news, obsession, curiousity, questions or recipes below!

Which image do you like the best and why?

With Love,

^{The Fungi Lovers Community: Home of #FungiFriday}