September 2013

 I know that we have barely stepped across the line into fall. The tumblingly blustery months of October, November and December are still hidden by a calendar page declaring it September.

So how can I be writing about spring flowers?

Boxes of bulbs are arriving on my doorstep nearly daily: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths. Falls labors have begun. And a laborious season it is for the professional gardener. But it is still out there somewhere hiding behind the page marked September.

September is being strangely rainy. The gardens after the months of near drought conditions look more pummeled than refreshed. I myself feel pummeled, the sprint from spring to fall, jumping the hurdles of summer have me feeling a little pummeled myself. A sloppy lackadaisy has come over me that hits me every year at this time. I know what’s ahead, but what happens now, in these few wonderfully passive days when everything begins to collapse including me, is a pleasure. Yet some plants buck this trend toward collapse, come defiantly into bloom: cyclamen, salvias and anemones.

And mushrooms.

On Saturday Michael and I took a long walk in the Olympic National Park, following the Skokomish River back into the mountains, trees, moss and fungus.

It drizzled and dripped, and poured upon us. Most hikers were gone, but we reveled in the rain forest in the rain. And we reveled in the mushrooms.

“ Amazing,” Michael said for the umpteen-millionth time. “I know I said that before,” he continued, “but I can’t stop saying it. It’s incredibly amazing”

Amazing it was. We were seeing a mushroom bloom like we had never seen before in our lives. Not just shear quantities, though quantities there were, but kinds. So many kinds of mushrooms. So many colors, shapes, sizes. The mossy carpet burst with them everywhere. And “everywhere” is not an exaggeration, but a simple statement of fact: everywhere.

Below is just a handful of what we saw: AMAZING!