Day 20: For all of the fact that we've had several drenching rains, the subsurface soil is still quite dry, as I discovered when digging down to the level where I wanted to anchor some gooseberry branches with an eye to propagating by soil layering. That also accounts for the shortage of 'shrooms under Big Doug, a spot which is usually deckled with Stropharia ambigua. As a general rule, Questionable Stropharia sprouts abundantly throughout my yard, and yet this year, I have only found this one. Why "Questionable" you might be wondering? Its edibility has not been definitively determined. You would think that would be a fairly easy thing to sort out, especially if there were a few dead mushroomers cluttering up the landscape, but the jury remains out on this showy species. Some authorities say that it is not poisonous, but also not desirable; others claim that it causes gastric upset. With mushrooms, it is always best to err on the side of caution, and besides, they make such attractive specimens for photography.
