What I'm Reading Now-Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (part II)

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets--In my last post we watched this video

and I told you about my shudder-inducing incentive to post a review about a book I didn't finish reading a year ago. By the time I got done with that, the post had already gotten a bit lengthy, and I figured no one would stick around for the review, so I thought I'd give you all a break and put the review in a separate post.

So, back to the book: First of all, fungi, mushrooms, mycelium...what's the difference? Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, and mycelium is the network of filaments that connect fungi (you can see an example at 00:55 in the video above).  Secondly, the book is dense, and it is not all easy reading.  There is a lot of really fascinating stuff in it about all the things that mycelium does, but it's also full of a lot of scientific jargon.  I didn't even get through half of the book, and I have three pages of notes from my reading.  The first page is mostly me just trying to keep my vocabulary straight, and the rest is all interesting facts or things that I want to know more about or questions that I came up with while reading. To me, that's often the sign of a good read.

Stamets talks about mycelium's ability to transfer nutrients between plants to help keep balance in an ecosystem, its water purification abilities and how it can help build good soil in no-till farming situations. Fungi has medicinal properties and potential as a natural pesticide against things like carpenter ants, fire ants, and many crop pests. Along with oil spills, there is good evidence that fungi might also be able to reclaim environments compromised by radiation and heavy metals. (This part left me with a lot of questions. The mushrooms seem to sequester and concentrate the undesireable material (for this reason, it's important to know where your mushrooms are coming from--just outside of Chernobyl or Fukushima? Mmmm...you might want to pass), but then what? Are the harmful materials somehow metabolized over several generations, or is the area always just full of toxic mushrooms? Stamets suggests harvesting the mushrooms and disposing of them at toxic waste sites, but then we're still left with the toxic sites.) Questions aside, the possibilities seem almost endless, and I think that Hawaii is a place that could benefit greatly from some of the solutions set forth by Stamets.       

Stamets' book is also a how-to guide for growing and using mushrooms.  This was mostly the part of the book that I didn't get to, so I can't really say much about it, but, just from flipping through it, it seems pretty exhaustive. 

I highly recommend this book. In my notes, I wrote that I thought this would be a good companion read to The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen (which I reviewed in 2008) and The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart (which I read and then didn't review last April). 

I'm a huge fan of all the cool things that nature does. It has figured out solutions to things that we have been struggling with for years.  Fungi is one of those cool solutions, and it's neat to see how entwined it is with the rest of the natural world. If, like me, you think nature is cool, you might also enjoy these TED talks:

Eben Bayer: Are mushrooms the new plastic?

Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action

Janine Benyus shares nature's designs

   

  

What I'm Reading Now-Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (part I)

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets--Okay, so I have to start out with a couple disclaimers: 1) I started this book about a year ago and never finished it, BUT I've been dying to talk about it since I finished had to turn it back in to the library. I even went so far as to buy my own copy since the library only has three copies and the wait list for it was always ridiculous...but I never got around to picking it back up. The point is, don't let the fact that I didn't finish it make you think it's not worth picking up. It totally is! 2) This post is all mostly lead-up to the actual book review which is in a separate post. So if you just want to skip all the interesting weirdness that is this post, be my guest, but I think you'll be missing out.

So, why have I finally decided to talk about this book? Well, mostly because of the pile of ants that were swarming my hair clip on my bathroom counter tonight. "Eh?" you say? Oh, sorry, "Ew," you say? Well, yeah. This has actually happened a few times over the last several years now. The first time was when we owned an ice cream store and I thought perhaps I had accidentally gotten some ice cream on my hair clip while I was hunched up on the top shelf of our walk-in cooler trying to de-ice the back of our condenser unit with a blow torch. (Yeah, that happened...frequently.) Aaaanyway, the ant swarms continue to this day even though we sold the store several years ago, so I have discarded the ice-cream-on-my-hair-clip theory and moved toward the theory that the ants are mining the rubber that makes up the grippy surface on the inside of the hair clips because it's petroleum-based. Obvs.

*crickets*

OK, first, watch this TED talk by the author, Paul Stamets. This is what made me seek out the book in the first place. I know it's 18 minutes, but it's an interesting 18 minutes. Mushrooms can do amazing things! (If you really don't want to sit through all 18 minutes, then skip ahead to 7:32 and watch until 9:40). That was the part that intrigued me the most and made me want to learn more.

OK, so you saw how the mushrooms ate up the oil, right? You may also know that ants are somewhat famous for being fungi farmers.  So, what I'm thinking is that the ants have figured out that there is this petroleum-based product that they can harvest and use to grow some kind of fungus. Makes sense, right? By the way, they don't only go after my hair clips. I've also seen them tear up surgical tubing and various types of seals on containers. It doesn't happen slowly over time either; it's not like I have to shake a pile of ants off my hair clips every time I go to use them. (Ick!) They (my hair clips) will exist on my bathroom counter or my nightstand, in my purse or on the desk next to my keyboard, in and out of my hair, unmolested for months, maybe even years, and then one day, BOOM! Hair-clip-shaped pile of ants! The only thing I can figure is that the rubber breaks down to a certain point where it suddenly becomes the perfect fungus-starter and the ants move in to take advantage. 

So: Ants mining rubber to grow fungus. That wasn't in the book (at least not in the parts that I read), and I think I might be onto something here. Maybe Paul Stamets will do some studies on this and get back to me! 

OK, so feel free to take a break here, or move on to part II, wherein I actually talk a little bit about the book. 

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

Well, you may have noticed my lack of activity on here as of late. Believe me, it isn't because I've had a lack of material. In October I went home to Colorado because my little sister was about to have a baby, and I wanted to be there for both the baby shower and the birth, which were scheduled about a month apart. Long story short, I went to Colorado, endured some family drama, saw my sister showered with presents like I have never seen, took some time to go visit an old friend in Ohio, spent some time with my parents, and managed to be there when my beautiful sister gave birth to her first-born son, James. Things didn't go quite as planned-James wasn't on quite the same page as the rest of us-but in the end, everyone emerged slightly overwhelmed, but happy and healthy overall, and what more can you ask for?

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-January 2012

Happy New Year to all you Garden Bloggers out there (and to anyone else who stumbles upon this post)!
If you are paying any sort of attention at all (and thank you so much if you are) you may have noticed that I haven't garden blogged (or blogged at all for that matter) since September. I wasn't here during October and November, and I totally forgot about GBBD in December until the very end of the day. So, I did get out and get some pictures for my records, but I just wasn't up to putting together a post.

Well, it's a new year and time to get back in gear, right? OK!

Leading that charge are my little tomatoes. I don't know what variety they are, but they grow wild out here, and they are teeny tiny, about 1/2" in diameter when ripe. Left unchecked, these plants will sprawl in a most unruly manner. Maybe the pot will contain this one a little.

One of my favorite blues, Lobelia.

One of my most reliable volunteers, snapdragons.

Hardy Ice Plant (Delosperma) always adds a nice splash of color.

This little guy made a surprise appearance the other day. I planted this Gazania sometime last April or May, and since then it has been hanging on, but just barely. It puts out a few sad, spindly leaves here and there, but I wasn't sure if it was going to bloom again. I didn't even see the bud sneak up, just walked out one day and, lo and behold, there it was! 

When I got back home in November, after a 6-week absence, this lavender was looking a little...mostly dead. I wasn't sure if it was going to make a comeback or not, but a little pruning and a little water, and it has made a spectacular comeback.

My Alyssum are flourishing in the pot with my lemon tree.

For sentimental reasons, this Clerodendrum quadriloculare is one of my favorite plants. The leaves are a dark green on top and purple on the bottom, and it grows like a weed. Literally. I have to pull up runners from all over my yard, but I wouldn't dream of getting rid of it. 

I have two smallish pots out on my back lanai, under our awning. One drains, one doesn't-I can only assume this means that one pot has a crack in it and the other one doesn't. Anyway, the non-draining pot gets a little swampy in the winter months, and the miniature roses that I've always keep in those pots don't always fare so well. Finding myself in need of yet another miniature rose, I spied these Fiesta Olé ™ Purple Stripe Double Impatiens. They have the same general look and feel of miniature roses, but they are good in the shade and need lots of water. Perfect! So far (2 months?) they are proving to be pretty hardy.  

My Euphorbia leucocephala-this plant is on my back lanai as well, getting more shade than the ones in my front yard, and is in the prime of its winter white.

This one is in my front yard and starting to fade a little. Amazing how much difference location can make.

Although not my favorite plant, I do love the flowers on my Lantana. There's something whimsical about them that I find charming. 

Chive flowers are understated but kind of pretty in their own right. 

Even with all the things blooming in my yard, sometimes I break down and buy flowers at the store. When I discovered this composition on my counter today, it made me laugh. It seems the people in the house are not the only ones who like wine!

Another store purchase to brighten up the powder room.

Thanks to everyone who went on this garden tour with me, and thank you, as always, to our Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Head on over there and see what else is blooming today! 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-September 2011

Well, it appears that I have, officially, missed GBBD which is hosted on the 15th of every month over at May Dreams Gardens.  I am not going to let that stop me though!

As it turns out, one extra day was all that my rose needed to open up all the way, so I think it was meant to be.

"Mardi Gras (Jacfrain)"

This is not necessarily the best picture that I got of my plumeria, but it is the best picture that I got with Mocha lounging stealthily in the background.

My Ice Blue plumbago blooms all the time, and so the poor thing hardly ever gets a shout-out here, but these are the first blooms that it has put on since the severe pruning that it got last month, so I figured I would show them off here.

I still have one tiny patch of lobelia that is hanging in there.

My Hardy Ice Plant is shrugging off this hot end-of-summer weather we've been having without even breaking a sweat.

My snap dragons look like they're having to put forth a little more effort, but they still have a few blooms hanging on as well.

My recently-planted lavender is showing itself to be quite hardy so far.  It survived the transplant and subsequent heat wave/lack of rain/poor watering skills of its owner to come back with a whole new blush of flowers in the last few days.  I almost clipped all the stalks off after they bloomed, but I'm glad I didn't. As you can see on the middle flower, the new growth appears at the tips, on top of the spent blooms.

My golden shrimp plant, whom I have dubbed Bob Fosse (see last month's post and comments).  Jazz haaaands!

My red ginger has gone from one big bloom to several smaller ones. I am following its development for an upcoming Progression Obsession post. 

Of the 15 spider lilies that I have in my yard, this is the only one blooming right now.

My rosemary is blooming more than usual.

My orchid has taken a little time off, but it's getting ready to come back to work.

And, as always, my Blue Daze could be counted on to make an appearance, even if this was the ONLY bloom it had to show today.

As always, thanks to Carol for providing an excuse for all of us gardeners to get out into our gardens and show off our prized possessions companions. 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day-August, 2011

Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, Everybody!  With our yard freshly pruned and August being one of the hottest driest months around here (unless we're getting rain from passing tropical storms) I wasn't sure what I was going to find today, but I managed to do OK!

Probably suffering the most from the recent lack of rain (and my poor watering skills) is my Evolvus glomeratus (Blue Daze), but shriveled or not, it's still putting out some lovely color.

Winning the award for "Best Attendance" is my golden shrimp plant, Pachystachys lutea.  It always shows up, never complains, and gets the job done with nice flair but little drama.  If I had to hire any of the plants in my yard, this would be the one.

To be fair, my lantana probably does the same thing, but it's always buried under my variegated hau plants, where I can't see it.  

I have a few red gingers that are in pretty nice form today.  They show up pretty consistently as well, but sometimes they look like they need to go back home, put on a clean shirt, and comb their hair.  Not really "front of the house" material, I'm afraid.

My white spider lily, Crinum asiaticum, was among the plants that got a pretty severe pruning yesterday, but the flowers are hanging in there. 

The creamy white flowers and the pretty pink bracts of my bouganvillea come in a close second for "Best Attendance".  

I've still got a few snapdragons...

...and some lobelia.

Another victim of the severe pruning, my variegated hau is being a real trooper, seeing as how these are the trimmings that are sitting in our truck bed, waiting to be hauled away.  

The newest addition to my yard, lavender.  I love the smell, but I can only seem to pick it up peripherally.  If I stick my nose right into the leaves or flowers, I can't smell anything, but as soon as I start to move away, I can catch a faint waft.  

Although they're not much to look at, the night-blooming jasmine comes to life at night and often fills the whole front of our house with its heady aroma.

This poor little guy, Cuphea hyssopifolia (False Heather/Mexian Heather/Hawaiian Heather) rarely gets any love, even though it blooms year-round.  It tends to get a little leggy and overwhelmed by all the things that are planted above it.

You know I'm getting desperate when I start taking pictures of my rosemary.

I love the hot pink and bright yellow of my hardy ice plant.

This time last month, my Agapanthus was just getting ready to bloom, and I was wondering what the weird little nubbins were that were sticking out about half-way down the stem.

Well, it turns out they were fairly normal flowers-to-be.  

Possibly my most mysterious bloomer is my Texas sage.  Like the drought-tolerant, desert plant that it is, it seems to go from zero flowers to fully-formed, open flowers overnight.  I have yet to watch a bud develop on this plant.  I think I might have to schedule a watering and photography stake-out some day to see how these flowers appear.  If I do, you know I'll post the riveting results here!

I hope you managed to find something blooming in your August gardens and that you didn't pass out from the heat while looking.  To see what others found blooming in their yards today, visit our Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day host, Carol, at May Dreams Gardens.  Thanks, Carol!  

What I'm Reading Now-That Day in September

That Day in September by Artie Van Why--When the author contacted me with a request to review his book, I was immediately interested because I've never really read anything about September 11th.  I mean, of course I've read news articles, seen survivor and hero stories on TV, and I've seen the events of that day incorporated into other literature; but I've never really read any stories about what it was like just to be there that day as an ordinary citizen.  Artie Van Why didn't miraculously escape from above the wreckage, he didn't heroically save anybody's life, and he didn't lose anybody close to him that day.  Like so many other New Yorkers, he was just there, living his life like he always did, and then the world changed.  He witnessed all the terrible things and felt all the shock and confusion that everybody else did, and this is his story about that day.



The book is short--only 87 pages--and Van Why manages to give enough background information for the reader to get a feel for who he is and how he ended up where he did that day without overshadowing the rest of the story. The first few chapters switch back and forth between the author's background story and the events of September 11th, and I didn't feel like it flowed well; I think he would have done better to stick with a strict chronological telling of the story, but this was a minor sticking point with me, nothing irrecoverable.

I think this story will resonate with a lot of people.  People who weren't there can still relate to the feelings of shock and disbelief, the helplessness we all felt watching the events unfold on the television.  I think at some point, we've all wondered (and then failed to adequately imagine) what it was like to be there...and then put it out of our minds and gone about the rest of our day.  Artie Van Why was there, and he wasn't able to put it out of his mind.  Initially, he performed his story as a one-man theater piece; this was his way of telling his story, getting it all out there, connecting with others who couldn't forget.  Eventually, he turned his story into a book, in part to make sure that the rest of us don't forget either.

Something that surprised me was that the author managed to bring this story home for me in a way that nothing else ever really has, and it was through the small detail of describing the World Trade Center plaza  where he used to take his lunch breaks or drink his morning coffee.  I've never been to New York, so the only mental images I have are of the hustle and bustle of New York--the tall buildings, all the people on the sidewalks, the cabs, Wall Street.  With all its millions of fashionable, never-sleeping, corporate-lunching people, New York always seemed so other-worldly.  Eating lunch in a plaza, enjoying a few minutes of sunshine, watching the tourists take in the sights that you've come to regard as part of everyday life?  I could relate to that; I finally had a way to relate New York life to my island life and suddenly I could really imagine the contrast of living your life one minute and the world falling down around you the next in a way that I hadn't been able to before.

While this book certainly serves as a reminder of the tragedy of that day, I was struck by the fact that it also serves as a reminder of how much we all pulled together as a nation.  Although Van Why didn't set out to chronicle any particular heroism, he still managed to highlight the ways in which the citizens of New York reached out to one another to show support in a thousand little ways.  Everybody came together as neighbors, as fellow citizens and united in support of one another. Looking around at the political climate in the country right now, I feel like we have fallen so far from that, and Van Why's book serves as a good reminder that we're all in this together and maybe it wouldn't hurt to take a little better care of each other while we're all still here.

As the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks approaches, I think this would be a fitting book to read as a tribute to those who died, to those who lost loved ones, to those who tried to save them, and to all the people who were there that day to witness all the tragedy first-hand.

Thank you to Artie Van Why for sending me a copy of his book.  For more information about the author and his book, you can visit his Facebook page, his Amazon author page, and his Goodreads page.