Mushrooms and Toads

It happens every summer

Here on the Great Plains of Turtle Island where I currently live the monsoon season begins in early July and extends well into August. The term, ‘monsoon,’ is not technically accurate. What we experience is just almost-daily afternoon thunderstorms (with an occasional tornado or two). I am not a meteorologist so please don’t ask me to delineate the subtle difference between monsoons and almost-daily thunderstorms.

The important point I want to make is that this short two-month thunderstorm season comes with two major natural occurrences. Once the soil is just soggy enough, millions of mushrooms suddenly — and I do mean suddenly — sprout forth out of the ground. Okay, I am not a mathematician so I am not sure if ‘millions’ is an accurate term. Maybe it is only hundreds of thousands. I have never bothered to count them or come up with some mathematical computation.

But, to me, it seems like millions. They are everywhere! They cover all the lawns and flowerbeds. They come up out of old tree stumps. They come up out of every nook and cranny of earth that is not covered by cement or asphalt. There are not only a crazy amount of them but there are also a huge variety of them.

Sadly, I am not a mycologist so I cannot tell you how many different species there are. I wish I was a mycologist so that I…