More Mushrooms!!!

 Look what I got for Valentine's Day:

My mom made it !!

Look at all these other mushrooms:

Fake mushrooms at the cheese counter on the border of Switzerland.

Picking chanterelles in the Catskills with Mama & Uncle Tony.

Mushroom hunting with Nuala, Donovan & Aunt Bebhinn:

 Some kind of agaric.

 We think this might be a chaga.

I like the color of this one. I can't believe it's bright yellow!!

 No idea. But it's cute.

 These ones look like twins. Still no idea, except we think they are some kind of bolete.

 Sooo cute, but no idea what they are.

We think this is is the upright coral because the book says that it is common in North America and it grows in woodlands.

 Look at this awesome stinkhorn!!!!!

 This one looks old, and we have no clue what it is.

Wow I can't believe that this puffball is actually blue!!!!!!!!!

Log status:
The log still has mold on it. It keeps coming back. We're going to try to grow mushrooms on it anyway. Right now it's soaking on the fire escape in cold water. It looks like it's starting to sprout, but at the same time, not really.

bang

After we washed it, we let it dry out a little bit.
Because we wanted it to get foggy in the bag, to get it sprouty.
Then we banged it on the ends.

Then we put it in a bag.

When we took it out of the bag, it was all white and fuzzy but...

it had more mold.

More than last time. We decided the log didn't dry out enough.
So we had to clean up the mold a second time. That made me really mad. Then we let it dry again.
When we looked at it next, there was no mold. Then we banged it again, and put it in the bag ...
again. I hope that there's no more mold...again. And that it's really fuzzy when we take it out next.

Re - Start

So the directions were wrong. They said to soak it for 48 hours a week, and then put it in a shallow tray of water. Then it got moldy.

We had to restart.

My mom emailed them and told them what happened. And they said that you're not supposed to use city water because of the chlorine. They said we soaked it for too long, and that you're only supposed to soak it for 24 hours. And you're only supposed to put it in the tray of water after it sprouts. It's supposed to dry out in between soakings. So we started over.

We rinsed it with bottled water and scraped off the mold. Then we dried it on the pan. After you're supposed to bang it with a hammer on the ends and put it in a bag until it gets sprouty.

I'm really mad at them because they gave us the wrong directions. I hope it's going to work.

Day Sixteen: still waiting.

Hellew. I'm still waiting. The log looks really weird. It's got a lot more white stuff on the top.

I hope it sprouts by the time we get home.We're going away.
I hope the white stuff are sprouts. I think they are. You can see them at the edges. They're tiny bumps.

Meanwhile, my cousin Mark gave me an awesome mushroom knife.

This is what it looks like when it's closed. It has a knife, a part for scraping, and a brush. The brush is for the tops of mushrooms so they're not dirty.

This is what it looks like when it's open. It locks so that it doesn't close on you and cut you.

This is what it looks like when it's cutting a mushroom. Some mushroom. I'm going to bring it on my next mushroom hunt.

Day Ten : How's The Log?

So, how's the log? Well it's starting to get these tiny white bumps in one corner. I think they're the mushrooms.

We re- soaked it last night. It's really heavy from all that soaking.
While we wait I'm going to tell you about some OTHER mushrooms. So on my birthday i got this really awesome mushroom book called The Book of Fungi by Peter Roberts and Shelley Evans.

I like to look at it to see if mushrooms are poisonous, where they grow, and if they are rare, etc. The pictures are super-awesome. Here are some of my favorites:

This is the Scaly Tangerine Mushroom. 

This is the Barometer Earthstar

This is the Mauve Elf Cup

This is the Glazed Cup. It really does look like a glazed cup!
I wonder if whoever named this mushroom was thinking about those martini glasses with the sugary edges.

This is the Stinky Squid I wonder if it smells bad?

Stay tuned for posts about the log!

Day three: Draining the log

When we took the log out of the water, the water was yellow.

For some bizarre reason, it didn't smell like mushrooms anymore. When we  got the log you could see the mycelium EVERYWHERE, now it is seems to be only on either end of the log. Before, it was soft and fuzzy and white, now it is soggy and gross.
After we took it out we put it in a shallow tray of water.

I hate waiting so I'm not so psyched to wait for it to grow.
I hope it won't take too long.