The Grass is Always Greener In the Other Person’s State

This is for my winter weary friends in the Northeast who by now, must be tired of white and could use a green “chlorophyll fix”.   This is NOT intended as bragging; my “grass” may be green now, for in Texas, it starts to green up by February, BUT give it 3-4 months and it will be brown as toast. Plus, it isn’t really grass.  Much of the yard is clover, which normally would be a good thing; it never grows too high, it fixes nitrogen in the soil etc.  The only hitch, and I think I have mentioned it before, is that it is BURR clover and eventually all the sweet little yellow flowers will turn to burrs that will be all over my dog, and consequently, all over the rug.  So this early shot of green comes at a price.

While you were all getting buried in snow, we were getting, what I think, was more rain than usual.  Ah, the wildflowers will be fantastic this year!  At least that is what I thought but just today, talking to someone about it, they said, “No, the rains need to come in the fall not spring.” Supposedly then, these rains were too late, so I better stop inviting everyone down to see the “river of color” the pastures can be.  It just shows that after 3 years, I still don’t know how to “read” Texas.  If I look at entries from our first spring here, I see the yard was awash with wild flowers in March. This March there are a few dandelions and a couple wind flowers; not exactly “awash”.

However, what we are awash in is mushrooms.  Not the wide variety and color array I would look forward to on the Cape, but still, my walk around the neighborhood with the dog had me stopping every few feet to look at what seemed to be a type of Earth star. Correct identification of mushrooms is tricky business and I have just spent the last 20 minutes scrolling through pictures of earthstars and false earthstars.

 None of them looked exactly like the kind I saw. I continued to look and now,  if I had to make my best guest I would say I was looking at, are you ready, Scleroderma polyrhizum.  Its common name is “Star Earthball” or “Dead Man’s Hand”. The latter paints a lovely picture doesn’t it?

 The written description comes pretty close: lover of poor soil (check), coming up through road edges (check), and splitting open to reveal black spores (also check).  It is supposedly found in many places including North America, and as broad as that is, I will also say, check.  They seem to love the roads gravelly edge, and they were doing that Super Mushroom trick of coming up right through the road. 

I feel I must add this “road” is not a well sealed professional road but our neighborhood facsimile of a road; tar gravel and vaguely flattened out.  I was pretty surprised when they put it in that the plan was for the intense heat of a Texas summer to melt it all together and our tires would act like the rollers to press it flat!  Great.  We all had gravel-studded tires, gravel-studded driveways and gravel-studded shoes for some time.  But it looks like this fungus loved it!

After so much rain, the bare spots in the back yard are covered with a black jelly fungus.  Its Latin name is too ridiculously long to spell. The cool thing about THIS fungus is that when it is dry, as it often is here, it is black and crusty.  However, when it rains, it returns to the rubbery texture that gives it it’s common name of “jelly fungus.” Cool.

This certainly has been like me, to start with green grass and end with black fungus!  I have always said my personality is akin to the White Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”, often rushing, often late.  My other tendency is to take you dear readers down “rabbit trails” as my mind pings from one topic to another! Best to stop now before another “trail” beckons.

Meanwhile, my March wish for you is that your snow may be melting and your grass greening before the month is over.  8 days to spring and counting!