Plastic fantastic lover (1/18/2026)

I am traveling this week and was struck by what is on my pill box.  We live in a "What the Fuck" time. (I know it is a plastic box)

A few years ago, I first learned from the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard that trees in the Northwest had accumulated fish DNA. This occurred in trees with a lot of fish carcasses around the base. All these fish bones were likely left there by bears (grizzlies) after they ate the salmon they caught. Can you imagine bears leaning against a big tree and munching on dead fish. It sounds like a Gary Larson Far Side comic. Some of these trees were a considerably distance removed from the stream from which the fish were harvested by these animals. It seems the mycorrhizal fungi were decomposing the carcasses and sharing the nutrients including the DNA with the tree.

Thinking about it, it begs the question will human DNA also be incorporated into nature? Could it be that the trees in the woods behind our home have some DNA from George Washington? He spent time in these woods, and I am sure that he left some DNA behind. I am not sure how long DNA remains unaltered when single cells are deposited in the natural environment.

Next question: is my DNA being incorporated into nature since I love to pee outside in the yard and in the woods? I learned that we are able to detect if people have corn products in their diet. Corn has a certain isotope composition that can be incorporated into our bones. An isotope analysis of these bones will show archaeologists what a person’s diet was like. Now this is not DNA, but I can now imagine that if I consistently use a single tree out there for my urination practice, it may actually incorporate something of me into its structure. This sounds like an idea that is fascinating and cool, but also scarry. Fascinating and cool because something of me may continue its presence after I am gone. I don’t know how long or even if it is more than a few molecules. Nobody has come back from being incorporated into a tree to tell me.

The scary part of this equation is that if this is true, anything we do has a long-term impact on nature. This seems to be undeniably the case anyway. It might explain why the eggs of chickens that are fed fish by products have a fishy taste, or the milk from cows solely grazing in organic pastures has a higher nutritive value than those fed with corn. The milk from these pasture and grass-fed cows has a higher Omega fat content. I have also heard somewhere that the meat from these cows rivals the Omega fat content of salmon.

While that may be not the scariest, even scarier is that we are so busy screwing up nature. We appear to be cavalier about what we are doing; it is insane. We know now that plant cells have PFAS and microplastics in them, and those chemicals are also being incorporated in us. We now find these chemicals in our brains and in men their testicles (this reminds me of Jefferson Airplane’s Plastic Fantastic Lover). Plastic babies anyone? (Is that a Frank Zappa song?)

It is unbelievable what we are doing to the environment! And then to think that the current administration is dialing back the clock and weakening the environmental regulations in favor of industry. It also seems that the large Wall street firms are distancing themselves from environmental causes. Many of the most polluting industries are in or near minority areas. It seems to be another form of genocide that they are attempting. Affluent folks can afford more expensive organic food, the costlier glass food storage containers, and so on, but let’s feed the poor and racial minority the unhealthy processed food. This seems to be the plan of the ultra-rich and the Stephen Millers of the bunch. If they cannot kill them with the Trumpstapo, by rounding them up and shooting them using the military or ICE like what happened to Heather Good, then we can at least try to poison them slowly. It is obscene! 

We need to set aside our politics. We need to protest what is going on in our environment, and fight for civil rights, environmental and social justice . Alternatively, we need to prepare ourselves to apologize to our children, grandchildren, and future generations for fucking up their world.

No snow in Montana in January.  Must be global warming.  

Mushrooms (11/04/2021)

In our area autumn is a great time to walk in the woods and hunt for mushrooms. No, I don’t hunt for edible ones, my wife is way to skittish and we would meet an agonizing end to our lives munching on a poisonous fungal cap of some kind. However, this past week I have been laying on my stomach in the woods examining them and taking pictures.

Here I am laying on the ground in the woods examining a cluster of oyster mushrooms.  These are edible; although since these are mature (as big as my head), they are tough!

My view from below, the oyster mushroom.

I was always impressed by mushrooms; I took a short course in mushroom growing in 1976 and got a certificate in it (official “mushroom grower”). From horse poop to your plate. It was part of my Agricultural Engineering degree. It was a week’s course and at the end you brought home a mushroom kit to grow them at home, under your bed. Boy, we feasted on mushrooms for months. I finally got rid of the textbook a few months ago.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I had a post-doctoral job where I worked on mistletoe. Now mistletoe is not a mushroom, but as part of the job I assisted in teaching a class on parasitic plants, plant epiphytes and symbionts. Mistletoes being the parasites and mushrooms being symbionts. We were still starting to understand the whole mycorrhizal world of fungi, and after a stint in the mining industry I more or less left the field. I did a lot of ecosystem restoration, in particular wetland restoration but mycorrhizae were somewhat pushed back in my brain. Only when I started teaching and talking about stockpiling topsoil did it pop back up. Finally, the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard explained a lot of what had expired in the past 30 years in mycorrhizae research, and it only had gotten better. My appetite was awakened by the book called “Overstory” by Richard Powers, who has a character who is very loosely based on Suzanne Simard.

Mold, fungi are a powerful group of organisms in the world. They are the ultimate undertakers. It is amazing, over time they are able to break down everything that is organic. But then, at the same time it appears they form this almost neural underground network between plants that give forests almost a sense of intelligence. Trees seem to be able to communicate with each other, feed each other nutrients and water, by way of mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi have invaded the roots of the plants and thus connect one plant with another. There are two types ecto- and endo- mycorrhizae. If you are interested look up what the difference is. Maybe one of these days I’ll write more about that. However, today I want to write about mushrooms.

Because all those mushrooms we see pop up in the woods, in our lawn etc. are the fruiting bodies of the mycorrhizal fungi and some other fungi living in the soil. When the temperature, soil moisture and humidity are just rights, strands of fungi get together and decide it is time to procreate, make babies. That is what those mushrooms are all about. Just like under my bed. They bundle together, pop out of the ground, out of a log or whatever, and loo there is a mushroom. Mushrooms have gills and in those gills is where the babies are. Thousands if not millions of spores which get disseminated by the wind and when the land in the right spot, they become mold threads again and infect wood or tree and plant roots, helping the forest do its thing.

Some more photos that I took this past week in the woods.

Far too often when I walk my neighborhood and see sick or dying trees I wonder, has the homeowner been treating their lawns with fungicides and killing all the mycorrhizae in their yard, basically cutting their trees off from their peers? This of course can not be proven unless we dig the trees up. But this is why I do not use pesticides and fungicides in my yard. I want a healthy soil where I can and will allow that worldwide underground web to exist and allow those trees to communicate and help each other. Together they much more capable to fight drought, disease, insect attacks than alone and deprived of their mycorrhizal support network.

Our beloved earth (7/16/2021)

In a recent post I asked the question if the earth loved us. This was not an original question, but something that was asked in a book I am reading. Now, I read multiple books at the same time, and in my last post I mentioned reading about the need for humans on this earth. In the same book, Wendell Berry introduced the term beloved country when he writes about taking care of the earth and the environment, so maybe I need to start calling it beloved earth, although I am probably not as spiritual as Mr. Berry.

I realize when I would be doing that, I would not very original; however, my heart is in the right place and I am giving credit where it is due. In an other quote by Mr. Berry he writes:

The standard – the physical, intellectual, political, ecological, economic, and spiritual health of this country – cannot be too high; it will be as high, simply, as we have the love, the vision, and the courage to make it.

I honestly think we can and should substitute the word earth for the word country and the sentence would and should read exactly the same. We should expect the highest physical, intellectual, ecological, environmental, economic, and spiritual ethics from every person on this earth if want to save some semblance of what we have right now for future generations. Surprise, surprise, we can only do this by truly loving this earth, our or your beloved earth.

You can just imagine how disturbed I was when I saw on a church billboard in a county just north of us a notice that read something like (I am paraphrasing here): “Join in us to prepare for what is to come next, since life here on earth is so horrible.” In other words, life sucks here on earth, join our church to get ready for heaven. Those folks do not get it; they only have one life! Let’s make heaven here on earth.

Mr. Berry argues in his book about the need to more tightly integrate the sciences and the humanities in order to achieve this. I hope that many of you have noticed by now, that I am a huge proponent of that. I do not want to call myself a philosopher scientist/naturalist, but I have argued for a long time that biologist or ecologists would make great economist and the other way around (maybe). I am a strong believer in the parsimony of nature and now of the mutuality and maybe even empathy, all things being studied by certain branches of the humanities. But I digress. I want to make this a short post, since I wanted to get this of my chest that I love the earth and I still hope she loves me.

Earlier this summer, when the temperatures were still cool in the morning, I loved to go on extended hikes in the national park near my home and explore the sites.  Sites that not many people get to see; off the beaten path.  It is nice to be out on solitude and meditate out there, away from the crowds.  

(a quick post script:

1. While writing this, the door bell rang, and a young, well dressed gentleman was at the door trying to sell pesticide treatments for my yard to me.  Poor guy, I lost it!  Another person who has no regard for mother earth, he probably goes to church and complains how bad it is here on earth and how he looks forward to going to heaven.
2. I purposely did not write about the current disaster in Europe, including my home country of the Netherlands.  Is this think mother earth is getting angry and the love hate relationship is really showing lately, but I write that in the blog post I reference above.)

Do we need humans? (7/12/2021)

Why do we need ticks in this world, or mosquitos? Those have been questions asked of me at times. Why do we need these vermin in our lives? They are all parts of the web of life, that is usually my answer. They serve as food for some other creature; the have a place. But then what are people for? This is a question asked in an old book by Wendell Berry that I am currently reading.

My argument has always been that the world will keep rotating on its axis around the sun, whether there are humans on it or not. Cockroaches will probably still be there whether people are there or not. I agree, some folks have created beautiful art: Bach, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Saint Saens, Mahler, just to name a few, and we would not have that or miss it.  If humans disappear from one moment to another, some animals and plants will suffer. Cows that have been bread to get milked twice a day will most likely die from mastitis; house plants will not get watered; neither will my bonsai. Our household pets and some other domesticated animals may survive, who knows. I always argued (not in my blog) that the earth might actually be better off without humans or when they vanished. I would expect that the world would eventually heal itself. I think this is partially visible in the Chernobyl area that was abandoned after the nuclear disaster. But do we as the highest animal in the food chain serve as food for some other creature?

On the other hand, Mr. Berry argues in his book that humans (or people) are needed for work (read the economy) and to protect the environment. This is a very idealistic view of humanity; still I walk through the neighborhood with my wife and watch her picking up discarded cigarette butts, plastic bottle and other trash from the street while I pick up the dog poop. To think we live in a middleclass neighborhood with well-educated folks who should know better. Daily, you can watch folks throw stuff out of their car windows, or things blowing out of their truck bed. In my estimation, maybe 15% of Mr. Berry’s folks are actively working on protecting the environment, another 15% are status quo, and the rest don’t give a damn. I hope I am wrong in this estimate.

I realize that I am very pessimistic; however, if we want to improve my glum view of society and follow Mr. Berry’s ideals of working on the environment, we need to work on people first. How would we do that apart from working on ourselves?

First, I think we need to step away from the words global and world. We need to start using the word earth! In my opinion earth would engender a closer connection with the self; global and world does not affect us directly.  As I argued before we need to find or develop a more accessible environmental language.

Secondly, the conservative movements have been very successful in pushing an economic agenda and telling us that deficit spending means that we are putting future generations at risk. Actually, nothing is riskier to future generations than environmental annihilation. This will happen with global warming (or should we call it the irreversible warming of the earth?). In a previous post <click here> I wrote about an argument about the cyclical nature of our climate that some will throw at me.

Thirdly, I am a lover of trees. Honestly, I think they are the best way to lock up atmospheric carbon, modify are local climate (both micro and macro climate), stabilize the soil, and provide essential habitat for a great many critters (a.k.a. diversity). Nothing gets me angrier than folks in my neighborhood needlessly cutting trees. I just finished Suzanne Simard’s book “Finding the Mother Tree.” It is an amazing read, something I always expected to find; however, she has articulated it very well.

Who would ever miss these tinny guys?  When walking in the woods this past weekend (after the area was drenched by the rains from tropical storm Elsa) I saw these small mushrooms less than 1 inch or 2 cm sitting under this root.  On a Virginia Mushroom group on Facebook someone identified these as being in the chanterelle group of mushrooms.  Chanterelles are mycorrhizae, and that is what Suzanne Simard's book is all about: the interconnected web underground that connects the trees with each other and the mutual support they give each other by way of this web.  In other words even this small insignificant mushroom which is the fruiting body of the mycorrhizae is sorely needed for the whole of the ecosystem to function correctly. 

Lastly, but probably most importantly, we need to lead by example. We need to do what is right, what is right for the environment, for future generations! This is what I have been trying to do with my teaching and my blog. I just wish that I could reach more folks with my activities. But I am not sure on how to turn it in to a vlog or a video blog or a podcast for right now. For one, from my end there is a lack of resources and a place to post all this, but also a way to get an audience. Right now, I have at somewhere around 150 to 300 readers (hits) per month even though I only have been publishing three lousy article per month lately. Again, if any of you readers have an ideas or suggestion, I am all ears. Furthermore, I am more than willing to write a guest column appear on your podcast or vlog. Finally, if any of you would like to publish one of your thoughts on my blog, I am open to considering that as well. But for sure let’s keep working on educating the masses.

Roots 3 (11/1/2019)

As most of you know, I make a feeble attempt to grow bonsai. I have been trying to do this (or faking to do this) for the past 30 years or so, and I feel I have not much to show for. A few of my trees may be getting there, but I still feel lost at times. One way to get learn more about it in the past was magazines and books. Nowadays, it is YouTube to the rescue.

As I mentioned before, one of my favorite YouTube channels is the “Bonsai Zone”, which is put on by the Canadian Nigel Saunders. Nigel has come a long way over the long years; however, I have one complaint. His videos are very long and tedious at times. Nigel literally tries to show you every step in the development of a specific tree that he is working on that specific day and the videos may run longer than an hour or more, which he thankfully cuts up in parts. I understand from a podcast that I follow, that YouTube encourages long videos on their most watched channels, and yes, I will keep watching Nigel. He is absolutely great. Currently I would not be able to do any better, although me wife keeps suggesting that we start a channel as well (The Naturalist Zone?). She proposes that she would handle the camera. My wife is a fanatic knitter (sometimes to my benefit) and she watches YouTube knitting channels. One of these channels (Fruity Knitting) even captured my attention because of the way they produce their program. They knit on their project, but they intersperse it with interviews of other knitters, go to shows, visit farms or regions, you know it.  It is full of documentaries and interviews while they also knit and give trick and how-to advise.

However, I really like the Bonsai Zone by Nigel. One thing Nigel emphasizes in his shows is the development of a good spreading root system before you concentrate on anything else. Nigel will actually take his viewers on walks to the park and the neighborhood to look at the roots and spread of or real trees. This has made me really conscious of the roots of my bonsais and of the trees I see growing around me during my walks.

I mentioned in my previous post that recently we spent a weekend in Westmoreland State Park. In addition to hiking in that park, we went for a walk in Caledon State Park, which is down the street. During these walks, I could not resist taking pictures of roots while thinking of Nigel’s message. What amazed me was that the American beech had what looked like the best or maybe the most obvious root development. 

I saw this beech in Caledon State Park and was duly impressed by its beautifully spreading root system.  These roots will feed a healthy tree and keep it thriving for a long time.

The roots of this beech growing in Westmoreland State Park are somewhat one sided; However, this tree was on a deep slope and the other side was less visible.

Another healthy root system on this beech.  This one is growing in Westmoreland State Park.

I actually found an oak with a beautiful root system at Caledon State Park.  Not that oaks don't have them, but this one was obvious and it was nicely above ground.

Now, this red maple had the strangest root.  It looked like a bulbous root where the small trunk came off.  I wonder if it was grazed or cut before.  Just very strange. 

I have written a number of posts on roots, ranging from our personal roots <here> to the roots of plants <here>. There are three more posts on roots and my bonsais, just look at the label section on the right and click on roots.

I also teach (preach) about the importance of roots in my workshops. In my soil workshop, I mention how the bulk density of soil will affect root growth. Bulk density is an indication of how tightly the soil particles are packed together and the tighter they are, the more difficult it is for the roots to push through the soil. A lot of traffic over the soil (like construction traffic, vehicles or simply foot traffic) will increase the bulk density and will make it difficult for plants to grow. In my soil amendment workshop, I tell folks how plant roots actually take up nutrients; while in my plant workshop, I speak about the symbiotic relationship between plant (roots) and mycorrhizae. 

You get the idea, roots are very important.  Furthermore, I tell my students that for the vegetation it is also “You are what you eat”; that the vegetation you see growing is a reflection of the soil, and that it all starts with a healthy root system. This is important in nature as well as in my bonsais.

The old man and the woods (12/27/2018)

It was early in the morning, the old man and his dog decided to go out for a walk in the forest that was located behind his home. The air was crisp this particular morning in December. The soil was moist. Actually, it was very wet. It had been a very wet year, and all the rains this autumn had not helped. Sections of the trails were flooded and when you got off the trails, you could never see what was hiding under the dense layer of fallen leaves and pine needles. Not that this is all bad, this part of the world is known for its “bottom land forest” and these woods are definitely part of that ecosystem. The old man’s home should have never been built where it was, in a wetland ecosystem, but it was built before there were any laws that prevented or at least regulated that.

Jake the dog was easily bored and when he noticed that the old man took his regular trail, the old man’s canine companion hesitated. Like some other times he just stood there in protest ready to turn around and go home. While it is a requirement in these woods to leash dogs, the old man hardly ever leashes his. Jake does not stray far from his side, and the only real mischief he gets into is eating deer pellets or what the old man coins “doggie probiotics.” So, there is no way for the old man to force the dog to join him.

There are; however, two remedies to entice Jake in joining the old man on his walk in the woods. That is bribing the dog with cookies or going off the trail and bush whacking. So, off the trail it was this time. However, the return trip always involves the trail anyway. While simply walking down the trail is often meditative, having done it so many times, bush whacking is always fun. There may be a rotten out stump hidden under the leaves and then all the sudden he would sink ankle or even sometimes shin deep into the ground. Having the groundwater only an inch or two under the surface would mean shoes full of muddy water. In addition, the woods are littered with fallen trees and branches. Sections of the woods have a dense stand of low bush blueberry, the only plant that the deer in these woods do not seem to browse. While this does not slow down the old man, Jake has trouble with the blueberry plants the branches are touch and they hit him in the snout and eyes, and the old man tries to avoid the densest stands as much as possible. However, the lowbush blueberries grow in the driest parts of the woods, which is nice on these wet days. 

Nature is still very active in the woods observes the old guy. While most of the deciduous trees appear dormant, the pines may still have some activity during the warmest parts of the day. A close observation of one of his favorite beech trees in the woods the old man stood still to examine the bark. There he observed insects that where hiding in the crevasses of the bark. At first look they appeared to be dormant lightning bugs that had bedded down for the winter. Birds abound in these woods and little warblers appear to have an eyesight in a wavelength that allows them to pick out bugs like this from the crevasses in the bark from quite a distance away. Obviously, the birds had not discovered these guys yet. Maybe they’ll survive till spring.

A little further in the woods, the man discovered group of yellow coral mushrooms poking out through the leaf litter. A wet log was covered by tiny small paper-thin mushrooms and a little further down the trail he discovered a tree trunk that had the white hairy mass hanging from it. Hen-in-the-woods, an edible mushroom; but let it be. 

Coral Mushroom sticking its head out from in between the leaf litter.

These little (papery-thin) guys were growing on a rotting log

These hen-in-the-woods were growing on a dead trunk of a maple tree.
The trunk closest the camera was still alive.

It was an exhilarating morning, walking off the trail, just anywhere where there was no standing water. But now it was time to find the regular trail and return. For the man it was time to hit a familiar path and enter a somewhat meditative state and for Jake to linger behind once he noticed this was the road back home which was worse than taking a familiar path. It was a time to absorb what he had seen and experienced that morning, to be in the moment, and not to have his thoughts clouded by what was going on it the world around him. Clouded by the pressure that these types of lands will be under in other states thanks to the policy of this insane government of ours.  Or clouded by the thread of having to postpone retirement and an even  longer working career because of a bizarre stock market.

Thanks heaven these thoughts were interrupted by some other shit, or better by what appeared to be coyote scat (or shit) on the trail. It could be fox scat as well, but it was the size of what a dog would deposit.  The poop were full of hair; whatever deposited the turds there must have swallowed the poor animal skin and all. The last interesting find in these woods before returning home after a satisfactory walk.

Still not sure who laid that heap of scat.  It appeared to consist of mostly hair, so it was a predator (a fox or a coyote?). 

Nothing better for Jake than to explore one of the ephemeral ponds out in the woods.  While Jake is not a hunter he enjoys the shallow ponds and just drink some of the water and smell the banks.  He does not like to go too deep.  Being a male dog, his wee-wee is his depth gauge.

The Green Wall (6/7/2018)

Sitting in our gazebo and looking at the late May/early June woods behind our home, I am awestruck by what we euphemistically call our “green wall.” It is a pallet of different levels of green and different textures being contributed by different species of trees and shrubs. Sitting here I see a pyracantha that we are training up the gazebo. Behind it there is our red maple tree that survived hurricane Isabel in 2003 as a mere sapling, but now is a big tree. Next to it is a strange blue spruce that we got as a life Christmas tree one year and is completely out of place here in southeast Virginia. I also see azaleas, dogwoods, a redbud, a red tip, sassafras, a yellow popular (also known as a tulip poplar), white oaks, red oaks. more red maples, sweet gums, loblolly pines, American hollies, a winged sumac, beauty berries, paw paws, viburnums, one butterfly bush, a fringe tree, two magnolias, a Carolina jessamine, and a hawthorn bush. That is only in our small backyard; no wonder we had a shade garden. I am really hunting around to find sunny spots to put my bonsai trees. They really need sun to thrive. You can see that in the understory of our yard where we have a lot of ferns. However, in one sunny spot we have native sunflowers, goldenrod and milkweed. I hate to admit it, but we have a horrible invasion of Japanese stiltgrass.

Two photos from our back yard.  The bottom one gives the view from the gazebo.  As you can see it is pretty darn green out there,  with the sun peeking through the holes in the canopy, also known as sun flecks.   It is woods as far as they eyes can see.  The bottom photo may be a little fuzzy because the gazebo is screened in and I am taking the photo through the screen.

I am probably forgetting some plants in our yard, so be it. Our yard surely is not master piece of landscaping, that will come once we retire and can spend more time out there, and work on the design. But one thing will be for sure, I do not expect that we will change the aspect that our yard runs right into the woods behind our home. Having such a yard that runs into a forest, we hardly can see the edge between the two, and so does the wildlife and nature that lives in the woods behind our home. Although often frustrating, deer make our yard one of the first stopovers in their daily migration into our neighborhood. Tasty plants don’t stand a chance. Over the winter, they even pulled one of my azalea bonsais of the 5-foot-high table to nibble on. Oh well, they did to that tree what was long overdue and what I did not dare to do. In addition to all the plants and the deer, we have so many different bird species visiting our little plot; we have skinks everywhere, frogs, toads, a couple of snakes, bunnies, turtles, squirrels, mice, moles, voles, just to name a few. And let’s not talk about all those daddy longlegs that are out there in our yard right now.

This is the azalea bonsai that was pulled of the table this winter.  It is currently blooming, but as you can see the left side was completely defoliated by the deer that got to it before I got to the deer.  Anyway, the defoliation is probably long overdue.

But one thing is for sure, the green wall in our back yard is in contact and communication with the woods behind our home. Others in our neighborhood have cut all the trees in their yards, turned their yards into managed lawns, hit them with fertilizers and pesticides. They created a biological and ecological desert.

In his wonderful novel “The Overstory” Richard Powers writes a short story about a Ph.D. student who discovers how plants communicate with each other by releasing volatile chemicals in the air, warning each other of pending insect attacks. She gets vilified by the establishment to be proven correct years later after she has dropped out of science. While this is just a story or fiction, it probably comes very close to how communication between plants was discovered. It seems that the Soviet scientist Boris Tokin was the first to describe in the 1920s and 30s that trees gave off volatile chemicals. Boris had an inkling that this was for self-defense, but I do not think for communication between plants or as he called them “phytoncides.” On a side note, it seemed he was an interesting character and being a politically correct communist, he published about his effort of integrating the philosophies and thoughts about Darwin, Marx and Engels. As I mentioned in previous posts, researchers in Japan, among them Tomohide Akiyama and Dr. Qing Li discovered in the 1980s that some of these phytoncides were actually beneficial to humans and introduced the world to the concept of “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku.”

But it is not only through the air that plants communicate. We are finding that even through the roots and by way of mycorrhizal fungi plants can communicate with each other over large distances and even exchange messages and even food like carbohydrates with each other in times of need (watch this great YouTube video). I would therefore not be surprised if the trees or the plants in our yard are communicating with the others in the woods. I also wonder if people who put all those pesticides on their lawns, in particular fungicides are severing those connections and isolating the few remaining trees on their properties; making them weaker and more susceptible to insects and diseases, let alone weakening them by pumping chemicals into them.

I guess for right now I will not be able to prove any of this, but all I know, our backyard teams with biodiversity: the trees, shrubs, animal life, and as I described in one of my posts even the little spiders with their iridescent eyes that reflect light from our headlamps at night. I know that our backyard looks pretty darn healthy (with the exception of the stiltgrass); it has not seen many chemicals in a very long time and it seems that nature is thanking us.

Newport News Park (10/12/2014)

 It was a damp cool weekend; and therefore great for some yard work.  We planted some perennial bushes and started noticing a lot of mushrooms popping up out of the ground.  Subsequently, we decided to go for a walk in the woods behind our house.  We soon were awestruck by the number of mushrooms everywhere.  So at the encouragement of my wife, it was time to break the phone out and start shooting some pictures of them.  About 5 years ago I did a whole series of mushroom pictures, so I am no stranger of walking through the woods braving ticks and taking close-ups of these wonderful guys.

We counted probably more than 20 different species ranging from very minute ones to huge mushrooms; and from eatable (chanterelles) to outright poisonous mushrooms.  No I do not dare to harvest anyone of them, since misidentification can prove deadly.  I just admire the heck out of them.  Having studied commercial mushroom growing when I was young, I love seeing them come up out of the ground for their day or sometimes hours of glory.  Before you get these great, what we call, fruiting bodies, mushrooms are nothing else but mold threads in the soil, that when conditions are ripe, come together as a group and all the sudden pop up out of the ground in these and interesting forms.  For example the eatable “hen of the woods” looks more like a white flower (gardenia) that has fallen on the ground.

Mushrooms help in the breakdown of organic matter in the soil, and a lot of mushrooms are micorrhizal, in other words they live on roots in a symbiotic relationship.  The roots supply the fungi (mold) with nutrients like sugar, and the molds help with the uptake of water and fertilizer by the roots.  In essence they scratch the root’s back and the roots scratch theirs.  So the soil and many plants need these fungi. 

Well, Sunday I took many photographs and here are two of the really poisonous ones.  I identified the reddish mushroom on the left as the “big laughing Gym”.  It is tall and has a circumference of about a foot.  That mushroom is hallucinogenic and according to my mushroom book causes “irrational laughing.”  The white mushrooms are as big as dinner plates, and are named “destroying angles”.  They are deadly when consumed; according to Wikipedia more than half the deaths from mushroom poisoning are caused by this mushroom; although it is a micorrhizal mushroom and really useful and important for plants.  An interesting world we live in indeed.  Although some are deadly to us, they are useful and essential for others, in particular plants. It was a fun walk through the woods and just great to see them all out.