Our First Morels This Year

       We picked these 25 morels yesterday and ate them for lunch.  Even though 25 sounds like a lot of mushrooms, most of them were about the size of the end of my little finger so there were only enough to cause us to want many more.  :o)
       I looked at my blog post last year on the first mushrooms.  We found them April 16.  See post here.  It is amazing how much earlier our season is this year!  Usually we find the big yellow ones near the end of April, so my sister, who lives in Arizona and loves to hunt mushrooms more than anyone I know, had planned her vacation to be here on April 22.  She wasn't able to come last April so she had been planning for months to be here at the right time this year.  She is now trying to re-arrange her schedule to come on April 8.   I'm not sure that will even be soon enough though.  This warm sunny weather is causing everything to bloom and mature early.

      As I walk through the woods looking for mushrooms I seem to be even more attracted to the wildflowers.  There are so many in bloom right now.  I love these beautiful white flowers of the bloodroot, don't you?