At the Busted Puffball Café...

... you can talk about your broken dreams. I had a beautiful dream of a magic mushroom named Puff. Puff the puffball mushroom. I thought we were going to slice him up into a million little slivers and fry him in butter. But you saw fit to break up old rotten stumps and fling them away into the corner of the yard, without regard to the whereabouts of the puffball, whose magic proved limited to the power to attract hurled stump parts.



Ah, Puff! I wanted knife-sliced slivers, not cudgeled chunks. The puffball will therefore live out its days, uneaten, rotting and freezing in the salvaged iron birdbath, with the clay acorn, the iron bird, and — nearby — the unoccupied teapot birdhouse.

Puff the Magic Mushroom...

... lives by the tree.

At the Mushroom Café...

... can you feel it?

More strange mushrooms.

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Found in Chequamegon National Forest.

At the Strange Mushroom Café...

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... how can you explain yourself, if you are not yourself?

The deer and the mushrooms.

Encountered yesterday in Copper Falls State Park. This is not a petting zoo, but a path through a scenic river area. Note the massive railing along the edge of the path. The state of Wisconsin is apparently concerned that its citizens, out for a walk, will tumble over the precipice. The national government — as you can see here — is far less protective of its bumbling, stumbling citizens.

***

I have another video clip of me walking up to the deer and saying "Hi, sweetheart." Then, another woman walks up and says — to the deer — "Hi, baby." So this is how women talk to deer? If so, why didn't we at least say "Hi, dear"?

We found 1.5 morels.

I'm not saying where.

We found morels.

We looked the hard way yesterday... and the easy way today:



At the Dane County Farmers Market:



Where they'll sell you the supplies to grow your own...



... mushrooms. But not morel mushrooms, which is what we buy:



And on to other things... curds perhaps....



Now, we're home, I'm blogging the morels, and Meade is getting some of them ready to fry into the morning eggs.... mmmmm.

***

See the jeans on that guy in the last photograph? That's what, chez Meadhouse, we call Randy Normal Jeans.

A Meadhouse counterscape...

... with morels.



Found somewhere in Wisconsin.

Trillium Erectum.

Ah! Trillium Erectum! We found a flower we didn't know could be found in Wisconsin. And we had all kinds of other adventures today....

Meade takes me hunting.

It's into the woods again today...



Where, exactly? I won't tell. I mean... look! Really, look:



Would you have seen what we saw?



Would you have had your Swiss Army Knife?



Would you have found this much?



Ha ha ha ha ha....



... la la la la la la.

"So I ate that mushroom, fly and all GULP just like that without even chewing. I could feel the fly buzzing all the way down. Mmmmm, fly."

"Then I ☽ met a mysterious ☍ man on ♌ the road, ☻ dressed in 〄 black and ☠ walking a ☢☡♽ white dog. ⚡ He seemed truly ethereal, but I know what I saw. No 〒 really, ✴ I'm ✣ seramous 〠check ❦ out ☥ the picture.✺"



Chip Ahoy ate that mushroom....

At the Orange Love Café...

... tell me: Do you love someone because they're like you or because they are different?

Today, the mushrooms are yellow.

Remember one side makes you larger, and the other makes you small!

At the Orange Mushroom Café...

... you may find the other side of what.

The most unusual book in your house.

Here's a little project that everyone can get in on, which I got the idea for reading this comment from AllenS in The Glad Hand Café:

I have two of my grandfather's books. Automobile Electricity -- Starting and Lighting, and The Automobile Storage Battery -- It's Care and Repair. Anybody remember when you had to check the water in your battery? There are pictures of a visit to the battery factory. Looks like young boys were used in the cutting and grooving exide wood separators. Some of them are wearing ties. Almost everybody in the factory are wearing caps. The very back of the books is where you can order wiring diagrams for cars. Such as the Brisco, Cole, Glide, Pullman. Hard to believe how many different car manufacturers there used to be.

So what is the equivalent thing in your house (or apartment)? It needn't be old, just odd. Find your most unusual book or two and tell us about it, either here in the comments or separately on your own blog (with a link in the comments or emailed to me). A photograph of the cover or a page or something would be nice. I haven't figured out what my book(s) will be for this project. I got rid of all the books I didn't really care about a couple of years ago when I almost moved out of my house, so there's nothing that's just bad. I'm not really looking for bad, just unusual, like "The Automobile Storage Battery."

ADDED: My book is "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross," by John M. Allegro. This 1970 book puts on a big show of scholarship to make the point that Jesus Christ was really a psychedelic mushroom.