SATURDAY, APRIL  22, 2023

A strange, fascinating birthday gift to someone who has in the past picked mushrooms in a field and on the lawn. I put the box on my kitchen counter and after two days of spraying with water, the spores became pins (lower right quadrant, under stalks) to 4" in four days. First crop 1.6 Kg. picked when light dusting of spores seen on counter. We ate half, half were chilled. Subtle mushroom flavour, texture juicy and soft, apart from stalks which needed to be sliced into 1 cm. rounds. Mushrooms were on earth before trees and grew about 20 feet, colonised by small living things. It was an education.