Our guest this week, Julie Linker, is currently dealing with a lime-green Chihuahua. Darcy is still on her school visit. So I bring you this educational snippet from our inbox.

To: Charity
From: Darcy
Subject: Mushroom hunting

What? They don’t hunt for mushrooms in Minnesota? Seriously?

It’s a rite of spring in Illinois. It involves walking through the woods with your head down. Occasionally you need to look up — for clues. Mushrooms tend to grow beneath elm trees, especially dying elms. They also sometimes prefer to grow beneath ash or wild fruit trees. If you’re on the sunny side of a slope, you might be in luck — but it doesn’t have to be hilly; mushrooms sometimes grow in the flat areas, but only on the edges, unless they grow in the middle. It’s not an exact science.

Five of us tromped through the woods for a couple of hours. My brother found two mushrooms, his girlfriend found one. My step dad, who is so renowned for his mushroom hunting skills that he was once featured in a full page article re: mushroom hunting (Bob Jarvis – A Fungi) found zero.

It was still fun.

I Googled. Apparently people do hunt mushrooms in Minnesota (I assume this happens after the snow melts). So, how about you? Any unusual rites of spring in your neck of the woods (or Internet, as the case may be)?