Shortcut to Mushrooms

Well so much for quiet beginnings.  We had an earthquake last night.  I felt the house shake.  Seeing as it is made of solid rock with walls a foot and a half thick, this was mildly unsettling.


It was the middle of the night so I lay there like an idiot with all the  earthquake protocol that I learned in grade school in California running through my head.  Would ducking under a table really be that helpful if several tons of rock and terra cotta tiles fell on my head?   In California all the buildings are stick frame with cheap stucco, and shingle.  . . . Meanwhile my husband has run outside and is yelling at me to bring the baby out while I am laying there comatose.  Apparently we were going to let our other three children asleep in the other bedroom just fend for themselves.  Which shows us why three people died in this earthquake.  Because we like to think that when catastrophe strikes we are all preparedness and resourcefulness, but what about the earthquake that happens in the middle of the night?  . . . or the fire that ignites the doll your four year old is holding before you have had your coffee?  (yes that happened several years ago, too)

I remember watching a show about Pompeii with my dad as a little girl.  They found that by pouring plaster into these holes at the dig sites they could see the pose of the bodies as they were buried in volcanic ash.  I used to fantasize that I would have been clever and fast enough to get out the minute it became obvious that Mount Vesuvius was blowing her top.  Now it is apparent to me I would have been yet another hole awaiting the plaster of some archeologist.

By the way you can see the grisly plaster casts here

But on to more pleasant things, here is a photo, with more to come...