Rain, rain, go away

Basic needs of a plant = sun and water. Water we got! Sun, I guess we could use a little more. Earlier this season - April actually - we had lots of warm humid weather and gentle rains. May brought amazing blooms and now June is promising to bring..... what? mushrooms? all over the yard?

Yes...toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, fairy stumps, whatever you want to call them, they are in every section of my very green grass. It's amazing how going over them with a lawn mower doesn't seem to phase them at all...they just pop right up again. Along the root lines of my river birch tree in the front yard, in the dip of the property line in the backyard, to the clover sprinkled grass outside the veggie garden. It's hard to know what to do about it.

Actually, I believe this area is just about even with the average rainfall for the year up to this point. Better than being so far behind like last year. It's definitely saving me some money that I would normally be putting into the city water, sewer and utilities bill. We've talked about getting a rain barrel, but I wonder just how much water I could capture coming out of my sump pump hose! Several gallons are coming out every day.

Tomorrow's forecast is for sunny or partly sunny skies, and we're expecting more thunderstorms and hot steamy weather for Minneapolis later this week.

Oh boy. This website tells me that the food sources for these toadstools are rotting plants and animal matter, so does it mean that my birch tree roots are rotting and it's feeding off of them? Also, all the grass mulch we've left earlier in the season is not good for this problem right about now. So...we bag the grass clippings and move them to the compost pile - which still needs walls built around it, by the way. I wonder if I could move the mushrooms to the compost pile and let them turn our pile into dirt. Hmmm....I wonder how many more we'll have after the next rain.

Photo and info about lawn mushrooms courtesy of www.lawncare-business.com.