Friday, February 10, 2017

Mushroom crowd.

It stopped raining last night.  Today the clouds parted, the sun came out and I finished pruning the Pinot grigio vines, yay!  I even tied the canes down on one row, double yay!  It was a rather squishy affair, as I was within inches of Vinoland's overflowing creek, but I kept both of my wellies on my feet by moving as little as was humanly possible.
One consequence of all the rain, (besides all the mud, flooding, a dirty Vinodog and boredom), is that some interesting fungi have popped up around Vinoland.
The poison pie mushroom (Hebeloma crustuliniforme) is, as the name suggests, moderately toxic to humans and usually appears in the autumn. But due to the fact that winters in California are so mild, this winter the poison pie mushrooms are enjoying an extended run in Vinoland.
There is always something to distract me, sigh.

3 comments:

New Hampshire Wineman said...

VG: Interesting fungus, and well photographed.
Made me think a bit on the days when philosophy was my main interest:
“The toxic agents have not been identified.” This unknown poison fits in nicely with John Cage’s notion of chance, and his hobby of collecting and eating mushrooms systematically, eliminating ‘chance’ which he embraced ideologically, the modern/post-modern belief in ‘matter, motion, time and chance, in which there is no basis for rationality. . .’ Cage reflecting on this danger made a personal choice to exclude this from his notion that the universe is pure chance. It’s called Humble pie; the universe can do that to us.

Vinogirl said...

NHW: In my humble opinion, sounds like mushroom-Russian roulette.

Thud said...

Did someone say pie?