Store Bought Spore Prints

Spore prints are super-fun mushroom art + biological wonder. I remember making them with my sisters when we were little, lots of little cups and bowls stolen from the cupboards and upended over whatever little mushrooms we had found that day, usually a rainbow of little toadstools spread across black and white construction paper. Mama is an inveterate mushroom hunter and carefully taught all six of us how to do spore prints for both identification and beauty.

Last year, I magpied a great teaching idea. of monthly themes for our homeschool when a friend shared that she picks one a month to guide her unschooling rabbit trail style. September's theme was "Mushrooms" which, granted sounds insane...(A whole month on mushrooms???)...but it was a solid pick folks.

• We're studying Egypt right now in history---Guess who ate mushrooms and thought they were only pharaoh level food!
• We read lots of books about mushrooms from the library including our current read-aloud, Flight To The Mushroom Planet, a silly, gentle, beginner sci-fi story from the 50's.
• We hiked our local parks and picked mushrooms as we found them, some to eat and some to just identify and poke apart on the dining room table.
• We read about how mushrooms grow and started three purchased oyster mushroom kits to grow our own in the basement. 
• We drew and painted mushrooms in art, talking about the anatomy as we went (cap, stalk, annulus...) and then we ended the month making spore prints to frame using store-bought portobello caps and I thought I'd share the process.

 First, remove the stem so you have a flat cap. Take care not to touch the gills (the part that looks like the pages of a book...as they are delicate and damaging them means a print that's less pretty.

 Lay each cap on a sheet of paper (white if you're using portobellos since they have dark spores) and then cover with bowls or cups to protect them from air currents that may disturb your design. Leave them to rest overnight.

 In the morning open up the covers and see what prints your caps have made. Portobellos have soft chocolate brown spores but mushrooms generally have all different colors and its fun to see the rainbow of results if you try it with random wild mushrooms.

Then, get out a magnifying glass and check out the micro-beauty of it all. Spores are miscroscopic and normally not visible to us, part of the minute detritus that we breath in and walk through along with the pollen and dust of the universe. Making spore prints is a chance to see them there, millions at a glance, in all their downy glory. The delicate outline of the gills is also super pretty, printed on the page like so many rays of shadow radiating around the stalk.

 

Tiny Bouquet

I have been thinking Lenten thoughts, going over ways to add penance, giving and prayer to my life in more ways and one of the ways I've been working on is a silent walking time first thing in the morning. Time to pray, listen, be still, hear and just generally not be online or on my phone or carrying on two or three conversations at once with the boys. I've been enjoying it a lot and am starting to wind my walk down with a little poking around type browse around my own yard to see where spring is showing up and what little touches of new life I see. This week, I saw that my Lenten Rose is blooming! It was just an unlabeled, cheap grocery store potted variety that I put in the ground after it finished blooming for me indoors last year.

I so hoped it would take, a Lenten Rose has been on my gardeny wishlist for a long time and lucky, lucky me...I got one for a pittance at my local grocery! I think I bought a mixed pot of several different cream, pink and burgundy shades and it looks like only the dark wine color has managed to set itself firmly into the soil. Still amazing to me that even when we are getting temperatures in the 30's and sometimes even 20's this brave little flower does its thing, undeterred. I have noticed that there are still several upcoming buds so I took to liberty of bringing one indoors to enjoy in a bottle. What a treat to have a small bouquet from my own garden in February!

Related articles

• Lenten Journey (terri0729.wordpress.com)
• Hella-What?????? (thegardendiaries.wordpress.com)
• Lenten Practice (nationalavenuecc.com)

A Sheaf of Painted Papers

Just sharing more of my latest paintings with you all today...been a while since I posted any of them. I'm still swishing away with my brushes on Tuesdays at my art group and loving it just as well. There is nothing that can replace community...to do things that you love in the company of others who love it just the same will give you a power not to be underestimated. I am quite addicted.

These ducklings are what I was working on today. 

My sister Foxy's ducklings to be exact...and I'm not done yet but I thought I'd share 

because I'm so excited with how they're coming so far. I like the composition a lot.

And here is a genuine framed painting of mine. See! 

This is actually the one I entered in the church art show I mentioned.

And in other news, today was our 8 year wedding anniversary! Hooray! Very hard to believe we have been married that long. Our marriage is in 3rd grade. Lovely. Told A tonight, during our stroll around the grounds of the New England inn where we had dinner, I think this has been our best year yet. Barring the euphoria of the year we were only dating, I think we've had no better time. And even the euphoria probably only brings that year up to a tie with this year. Pretty good stuff. Am enjoying marriage very much these days and feeling very bullish on the whole concept of another 8..... or two or three 8's as the case may be. Bring it on!

After our dinner we were driving back and woohoo!!! The periodic lobster special at one of my favorite little grocery stores was on! And we dashed in for a late night lobster run, you can never have too much lobster and when its only 5.99 a lb....why dawdle.

In some ways I feel made for New England.