As me and my loyal fourlegger were walking through the forest today, one of the things that stood out to me was the presence of a quite large scattered amount of mushrooms. In my mind mushrooms are really something for in the autumn, unless it has been extremely wet in the summer, which it hasn't really. Or has it?
To me it is hard to tell when you think back in how you experienced the amounts of rain there were, and the actualy data on how wet it was. Holland is always known for its scattered showers throughout the day, and it is a matter of many you catch them by biking through them, on how it feels how rainy it was. Yes, there were showers, and a lot. But in general the total amount of water still calls for a national shortage of water.
When I reached here in January, quickly after that there were a lot of warnings of rivers which were overflooding, and yes I remember a lot of biking in the rain and an overal grey feeling in Febuary. But soon after that right about when covid-19 started, it also felt like a neverending Spring started. The weather and the sun was out, and the potential flooding of the rivers turned into drought. Drought in a way of that people were warned not to water their gardens and fill their swimming pools anymore because of the shortage. I remember as a kid in the US that washing your car was always something that wasn't really allowed to the shortage of water.
Over the last two months I have the feeling there were on and off rain showers, but nothing ridiculous. Enough to water the plants, and enough to still have the feeling that Summer is here. So how come already all of these shrooms are here? Are these Summer shrooms, does anybody know? And the next question? Are the eatable?
In Switzerland there was a cool feature last year where you could have your mushrooms checked on if they are eatable or not, and a lot of people I know used that. Mushrooms in mountain areas are normal and also to pluck and eat them. But it comes kind of picky if they are good to eat or not, and some advice from an expert can really make a difference between a bad stomach or even a hospital visit.
So yeah the data on if it was wet or not. News headlines were saying 'wettest February of the century' or 'Febuary was in the top 10 of the wettest months over the last 100 years'. The more data you have, the more reason there is to make a headline of something that wasn't even that special. And so it feels like every month has the most blabla in the last x-time. News is annoying because there are only going for the headlines.
