The ones I find have purple rings around the stem (veils).

OK, I'm better know, anyway about my first find(again). It was early october, just starting to get cold outside. I knew what I was looking for because of the tremendous amout of previous research I had done to ensure I didn't pick something poisoness(call me over catious, I just wanted to make sure)

So I know of a field through a tip from this board. I drive out there during the day to see where I'm going to enter the field, and to see if there were any obvious fruitings. I found a safe entrance, but disapointingly, didn't see a single mushroom in the field. Despite that, I drove out there later that night with a friend to see what we could find. After hoping the fence and searching for about an hour and a half, we were about to give up. Thats when mark (friend of mine) says "hey mike (that me ) take a look at this". I turned around to see a huge white cap with a touch of gold brightly shining in the moonlight. I imeadiately knew what we had found. I walked over to the lonely mushroom and observed him for a while. I noticed the all to familar purple viel hanging from the stem. I plucked him from his turd and turned on my flashlight for a better look. Soon as I looked at it with light, the blue stain at the base was very apparent and I knew for sure what I was holding in my hand. It was magical moment, it really was(well not as magic as the next 6 hours but magical none the less)

The next week I returned to the same field after a good rain and found enough to trip a few of my close friends. That was last october, and I've yet to find a single cubensis since, except one lonely fruiter earlier this year in May. Now if would F#@*ing rain damnit, I could get out there and find more. Until then, I guess I'll just sit and bitch about it not raining

The Lizard,

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[This message has been edited by Lizard King (edited June 01, 2000).]

I went back to that field alot last fall, and every time I went out there I found at least 10(even without all the right conditions). I plan on going back to this field if we could just get some rain.

It's supposed to rain here in GA 3 days next week. maybe that will help things out.

I hope so...I'm getting impatient...

~SS

It was early October, and I awoke from another series of dreams that involved mushrooms. The image of a particular garden setting in the Seattle Arboretum - a garden setting which I had never visited, yet I knew it was in the arboretum? spooky - had revealed itself in my dream. I climbed into my pants and boots and willfully stomped out the door with my latte in tow, my wife calling out to me? Where are you going??? A crusty morning smile and a wave and I was off.

The still, wet morning hung over me like a cold, all-knowing eye as I walked through the trees. I half an hour into the trek: the garden. The Garden setting of my dream? right there. I just knew. I stopped and exhaled. A long, slow breath, a dragon's smoldering steam teeming from my guts into the air before me. I watched my breath, the mark of a dying fire, of failing blindness, spilled into the shadows beneath a Japanese Maple. And as my breath flagged, the new was drawn in. And As I breathed in? IN washed a sweet smell. A smell that brought back my youth. The smell of earth. Not just dirt? but that particular smell of digging, from when I was young. What WAS that smell. Now I knew. It was.. it IS, the smell of the simpler life form we know as fungus. It was everywhere. It rushed into me and filled me with a purpose unlike any that I had ever known. A directive. I turned and looked down.. And BAM> about ten feet away, these tiny little caramel-colored heads peeked over the bed of decaying leaves at me. I had seen many mushrooms in my life. I had seen perhaps thirty species that morning alone, but I knew - I KNEW that these marked the steps of el dorado - these glowed? they shown in the green / blue light of shady day.
The tiny, undeveloped caps of what turned out to be Ps. Cyanescens, caught my eye and my heart. I was hooked.
Although these first few, minute specimens were few and barely visible, the marriage of my eyes and their countenance heralded a union of man and mushroom that to this day, has yet to fail to produce a find on any given day. That day alone I came home with well in excess of a pound of mushrooms. Hardy, brown and white and blue and bitter. And perfect. I picked far more mushrooms than I could possibly use, and still do to this day? but I believe it is my purpose. I believe that it is by design that I should find and share mushrooms and help them convey their ancient knowledge to the blind and deaf - or the hard of hearing and those who need glasses. Money will never blemish my endeavor, nor will greed or carelessness. I will, whether I want it or not, always be one of the chosen few who the mushroom (gods) trust to carry out their will.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must log on to some porn and give the monkey a thorough thrashing?.

m

[This message has been edited by mattso (edited June 03, 2000).]