In Its Time

Two years I waited for the shiitake logs to produce and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. About a year ago, having accidentally grown enough gourmet mushrooms for five years on my first try, and dealing out the other hundred pounds or so out to the neighbors from under a trench coat, I have finally decided to boot up the mushroom machine again. And, focusing on the medicinal varieties as well as the tasty kind (fried blue oysters, you know who you are), I was going to grow shiitake indoors.

Hmmmm…takes a long time, and takes up a lot of space, but no collection of useful mushrooms would be complete without them. However, my shiitake darlings showed out in my woods just when I was about to order liquid culture. Now, I can add more logs outside and I have space for more blue oysters inside. And pinks, kings, black pearls, Italians, chestnuts. Okay, (scratches head) I have to choose.

I think my takeaway is while I was taking my time, the shiitakes were watching, waiting, holding themselves back until the perfect moment when the time was right – and now the logs are bursting. I get it, sometimes we have to make a schedule and force everything to conform around it, but really, do we have to force EVERYTHING? Obviously, creativity, or creation, can use a little push now and then, but I’ve long learned that the level of strict structure is directly proportional to the rise in frustration and the decline in production. Mostly because there is an inherent arrogance in believing I understand all the factors in the equation. Honestly, I have more faith in my process of groping around, feeling my way, than I do in keeping a single day’s agenda in tact.

For instance, looks like I’ll be down in the draw soon, picking mushrooms. Where did I put that trench coat?