Karen all of your stuff looks great. As far as your back goes, take care of it sooner than later. I hurt mine almost 4 months ago finally went to the doctor after all kinds of pills,rest,and 3 epidural cortisone shots I had back surgery last Monday. I had a very large herniated disc, and could hardly walk. My quality of life sucked I have missed almost 4 weeks of work just laying around. I got depressed because I thought "my summer will be horrible if I can't play in the yard and make more garden art" Well anyway the terrible pain and numbness are gone from my leg now I just have the pain from the surgery but I know that will pass. So take care of your back sooner then later. God bless Sue

First of all thanks for sharing the mushrooms with us (at least to taste visually :-) and I hope you had good luck on your spore collection. My question is about spore handling. I watched the link you posted and yes he is creepy sounding. He kept stressing sterilization. Now nature is far from a sterile environment and mushrooms grow just fine in nature. Does anyone know the importance of sterilization when spore collecting / processing ? I wondered if it was the 'type' of mushrooms he was dealing with. I can understabd it for the edible ones. For me I would want to do edible mushrooms and possibly a few non-edible. We have recently learned about using mushrooms to help decompose wood chips which we will have a bunch of soon. What I learned was that if you add mushroom spores to the chips it helps them decompose better. After seeing the cost of mushroom syringes I cringed. I would pay that for edibles but would probably buy a kit instead. I was considering walking around and collecting spores of normal mushrooms via the print method you described and using them on the wood chips or simply taking those shrooms and dropping them down on top and letting nature do the rest. If I need to take prints I really did not want to go through so much trouble for the non-edible ones. Would someone with experience in shrooming touch on my question and ideas or offer better/less expensive ways of getting shrooms to assist the decomposition of the chips ? thanks !

Hi everybody! Your gardens look so sweet! I love all the things you put into yours, Chris, and your fairy looks like a fun, goofy character! Her night solar light is so high-tech and goes so well with the mosaic stepping stones you made for her. Caroline, I can't wait to see yours all put together. I also think your door is charming and I love your high-rise concept! Murraysmom, the martin house looks perfect in the iris greenery and The whole set-p is very cute. I did fairy dish gardens for all my nieces and a grand nephew a few years ago. I had a ball making them. The boy got a dinosaur garden, though! I made myself a gnome garden. I bought a little cottage made of cement with a tray roof made so you could plant onto it. I glued all my stones collected from Great Lakes Beaches onto the cottage walls, but ran out before I was done. The roof planting has not worked out for me yet. I have had trouble keeping the plants watered. I also did not have enough light, then added a fluorescent lighting system that was helping a lot. Then the light bulb burned out, then I finally ordered replacements online, and then the frame I had made for the light system came apart..... So my poor gnomes have been neglected and they need their home to be rejuvenated. After I fix the lighting system! This was their world before the disasters struck: The bare side of the house, showing how the roof works, too. The other side of the house, with stones making an awning over the window. The laxy, sleeping gnome near the dining set, with the pond in the foreground. The sky view of the garden, with the gnomes' house in the upper right, their orchard in the upper left, and a blue stone fence along the edge of the orchard. The front of the cottage, with the metal front door ajar. The wise gnome is studying. Behind him is the bathtub I made from a tiny planter I bought and added little feet (glass beads) to and I also painted the rim and fleur-de-lis on the front gold. You can see it in the first photograph, too.

According to these people, chaterells are popping all over central Florida right now. Also there is a set of steps to follow to determine if your find is edible. One of them... WAY into the process!... is to taste and then spit it out. Please be VERY careful and fully educate yourself. There are guided shroom ID hunts available, too.