A few years ago I wrote a post about how I resonated with the lyrics of a country song: "The only ground I ever owned was sticking to my shoes." My gardening has been limited to containers on the front porch. While I have had fun with this container gardening, buying a house and therefore the dirt that goes with it opens a whole new world of possibilities. And I am absolutely giddy about this.
We looked at the house once before we signed the contract to buy it and that was in January. Any yard in January just looks dull and brown. The selling point for us at this house was the screened in deck so it was hard to look beyond that to the yard. Since moving in a few weeks ago it has been fun to be a part of the transformation of spring. For us spring has even more surprises since we have no idea what plants and trees we actually have. My mother was very jealous of the flowering quince blooming next to the basement window. I was sick right after moving in and loved lying in bed looking at the purple blossoms on the redbud tree outside our bedroom window. Then we discovered the irises under the pine trees, peonies popping up, and the 2 lilac bushes in the yard-- jackpot.
As I was poking around the lilac bush and daydreaming about backyard possibilities in my head I noticed a mushroom growing by the storm drain in the yard. I hadn't seen a mushroom like this before so I called Arthur out to look at the beauty of nature in our backyard. Then we realized that it is was a morel mushroom. In our backyard. To give some background info-- morels are highly sought after mushrooms because they are suppose to be delicious (if one were to enjoy eating fungi). They grow in the area and mushroom hunters keep the locations they hunt top secret. My former boss hunted morels and shared with an 85 year old patient where he finds them at. A few weeks later he went hunting and found this patient there already there gathering the mushrooms. Last week there were even a few people who took time off from work to spend the day hunting morels so it is a big deal in this area. But we just stumbled over them in the yard. Arthur is going to cook them up for dinner later in the week.
So now that I have a whole yard to garden in there are so many more possibilities. We can plant potatoes or a few squash plants. My blueberries can be plunked into the ground instead of being shipped home to my parents garage for the winter. We can start a compost pile outside instead of the basement and maybe someday have chickens-- city ordinances allow up to 4 hens in a backyard. Arthur did wander why I moved 3 bags of dirt to our new house if we have a yard full of our own dirt. I informed him that it wasn't dirt but potting mix and we couldn't get that in the backyard. Omnia Vincit Amor.
After writing this we found another huge morel (and Arthur has big hands):
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