A Colorful Afternoon

On Sunday I had the Crayola experience at the Mall of America.  This mall is a place I generally avoid.  The sensory input of this palace to cultural consumerism is overwhelming to me. But the chance to see my grandgirls is more important than my sensory issues. We spent some fun time in this very colorful place. We colored. We made crayon labels with our own words and glued them to crayons to take home. We used tablets to make selfies with colorful eyes and mouths and head pieces. We stepped on footprints in front of a screen so that when we moved the crayon moved too. We walked on a dance floor that had moving puzzle pieces. We played on playground equipment for at least an hour. Luckily the adults were too big to fit on this equipment so we had to wait on benches.  I got tired just watching the kids exercising. They had a huge lightbright board that even I had fun playing with. The lightbright bulbs were an inch in diameter and about five inches long. We melted crayons onto a spinning piece of paper. We played with playdough and cut it into shapes with cookie cutters and kitchen utensils. We did not do every activity offered but we got most of them accomplished. The girls had fun. I recovered from my sensory overload on the drive home.

Not Every Day Goes According To Plan

Yesterday I was in a hurry to get to my mushroom class and I could not find my car keys.  I keep my keys with my wallet. I cannot leave even though I have another set of car keys. Normally I keep them in the same place but not on this day. I am walking around the house retracing my steps from Friday night for the third time.  As I walk by the kitchen table a glass bottle of extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil leaps off the top of my refrigerator and smashes itself on the counter top next to the microwave.  Extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil sprays all over the kitchen. Glass shards fly like sharp missiles between the fridge and the cabinet and as far south as the door to the deck.  I stand there in disbelief. This is the bottle of extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil that I bought back in January at the Auchan grocery store in the shopping mall in Catania, Italy. I spent three Euros on this bottle of extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil.  I wrapped the extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil in bubble wrap. I packed it in my suitcase. I brought it home on a January night when the air temperature was 33 degrees below zero. I never even got to open this bottle of extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil. Well, the bottle is open now. My mind can't accept that this just happened. I walk away.  I find my keys and leave the house knowing extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil is dripping everywhere and I have a big mess to face when I get home.  I try not to think about it. When I do get home I don't go in the kitchen right away. I research how to clean up olive oil. Turns out you need paper towels. strong dish detergent and a lot of scrubbing.  I place my Tina Turner CD on the player and turn her up very loud. I have to move the refrigerator and the stove out to clean up this mess  By the time Tina is done singing I am not finished mopping up the extra virgin, unfiltered olive oil. I still have another 15 minutes of work to do. As I move the refrigerator back into place a bottle of vitamins jumps off and hits me on my head.  The cap magically opens and 40 vitamins are strewn all over the floor. I think there are still shards of glass on the floor so I throw the vitamins out.  I apply duct tape to my slippers so the sticky part is on the outside and I step over every single part of my kitchen floor. I hope I got all the glass up. I hope I got all the extra virgin, unfiltered Sicilian olive oil up. What else can I say? Not every day goes according to plan.

Shiitake!

Today I went to a class on mushrooms that I had signed up for months ago.  I could not find my car keys when it was time to leave. In my search for my car keys an accident happened. I couldn't believe my bad luck but more about that tomorrow.  I pretended the accident didn't happen and headed to the Saint Paul campus of the U of M for my class. I read the email about parking on the forest service road. I didn't read the other email saying not to park on the forest service road. A car was parked at the entrance to the forest service road but I drove around it.  I wasn't supposed to park there but once I was there they told me to stay. Students from the U of M Mycological Society were there to help us as well as women from the Women's Woodland Association. We met in the garden shed right near Cleveland Avenue. Coffee, tea, and assorted treats were waiting for us. Three tents were set up. In one tent we registered and paid our fees. Rain fell during the entire three hour class. I had a good raincoat on and my hiking boots so I was okay but the hot coffee helped quite a bit. Between the tents and the road that lead to the campus buildings was a long and narrow bit of woods on a hill.  On that hill, under the canopy of trees, the students had planted a fungal garden. Inoculated logs lay propped up on other logs or pallets.  In this class we inoculated logs cut on March 10. Fresh cut logs are necessary otherwise there would be other fungus in the wood. Our ironwood logs were cut in southwestern Minnesota. Our first step was to use an angle grinder and bore holes in our log in a diamond pattern. I cut the holes in my log and that wasn't too difficult.  I guess an angle grinder has more torque than an ordinary drill.  After that we inoculated our logs. In the photo above you can see a bucket of shiitake mushroom spawn.  I chose the Bell whether variety because it is a cold weather mushroom spawn.  My other choice was a warm weather mushroom spawn which would fruit in the summer.  Mine should fruit in the spring and fall. What they did not tell us when we signed up for this class is that it will take a full year for the mushrooms to fruit. The earliest shiitake mushroom I will harvest will be in the spring of 2020! No wonder they said the hardest part is the waiting. Using that tool with the wooden handles we picked up the spawn and injected it into the log until the hole was full and the spawn was level with the bark. After that we dripped hot wax into each hole to seal it shut.  I was given a metal tag and a nail.  With the nail I scratched the species of Shiitake into the tag and nailed it into the log. When I got home I took the log out of the trunk and set it upright in a shady spot of my yard.  I hope I don't forget about it.  I also paid five dollars for a jar of oyster mushroom spawn.  Oyster mushrooms are a native species and are not nearly as fussy as shiitake mushrooms. I can deal with the oyster mushroom spawn another day. Whether or not I get any mushrooms out of this day I will come out ahead because I met a group of interesting people, learned some things, laughed and had some fun. By the time I got into my car at noon the rain had curled my hair so tight I scared myself when I looked into the rear view mirror. I was happy to get out of that forest service road without getting stuck in the mud.  Who knows?  I might join the mycologists myself someday.

A Friend Migrates Home

An old friend reappeared in my life today. I got home from work. As I took my mail out of my mailbox my old friend greeted me from the highest branches of a tree. Now that my friend is back I expect to hear it calling almost every day. Those red shouldered hawks - they like to talk and they like to talk all the time.

Spring Chorus

Yesterday during my lunch time walk I heard the chorus frogs calling for the first time this year.  The pond is between my building and the sound wall for the freeway.  Mountains of snow and debris have been bulldozed onto this pond over the winter. The water is not open yet the chorus frogs are in there singing their love songs.  Music to my ears! I miss doing the frog and toad survey. I had hoped the state would get it going again but it doesn't look that way.

The Alice Network

One of the people in my book club suggested we read The Alice Network by Kate Quinn but we chose another one.  I was intrigued by the one paragraph description of the story so I borrowed this one from the library. I am so grateful I nabbed this book because it was a mesmerizing drama. Both of the main characters are women. One is Eve who was a spy in World War One. The other is Charlie, a college student who is good at math but in trouble because she is pregnant and unmarried. When Eve and Charlie meet the dislike between the two women is passionate and mutual. Little do they know how much of their lives will intertwine.  The author did a great job describing the characters and the scenery. The conclusion is climatic. This was a great book to read.

April Fool

As old as I am I remain gullible.  I totally fell for the story of the wooly mammoth being stolen from the Bell Museum yesterday. To top it off I had plans to take my granddaughters there and was mourning the loss of the wooly mammoth big time.