Another Day in the Country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
When my sister and I were living in California we used to wonder just what it would be like to experience the seasons in Kansas. In California the seasons are mostly winter with rain and summer when it's dry. The weather is very predictable in California. In the summer you can plan outdoor events and pretty much know that the sun will shine, it won't rain, the wind won't blow. You know that it will be cool in the morning, warmer in the afternoon, and cool at night.
In Kansas, all of this is up for grabs and yet we left our air-conditioned offices with windows that did not open and came to the prairie to experience the seasons. We knew that we wanted to experience spring with its great outburst of growth — we didn't know that much about wind, wind, and more wind. We also didn't know about hunting for things to eat.
Jim was our first neighbor to come calling in the spring. "Let's go hunt for asparagus," he said. We jumped into his old golf cart and headed for the county road. Jim is gone now and so are a lot of his asparagus patches with county road improvements, but every spring we think about him. "Isn't it asparagus season?" we ask each other. "We'd better go hunting."
That same first spring Bobby showed up on the front porch. "Ever tasted fresh morels," he wanted to know. We hadn't. We'd tasted lots of other kinds of mushrooms, being vegetarians, but not morels.
"Wow, these are delicious, " I said as I took a bite of mushroom that he'd just French fried — still warm. "Where do you find them?"
"Oh, that's a secret," he said, "an old family secret. I gather them every year and I'm not telling where they are — I'm no fool," he laughed.
Through the seasons in Ramona, I've halfheartedly watched for morels in the spring, but I've never found any. Found a lot of other weird looking fungus, but not succulent morels waiting to be French-fried.
Rohani was looking for morels this spring, too. It was morel season and when Triple T found out she wanted some he said, "Ah, just look down by the creek." She looked and she looked and she emerged from the creek bed with lots of scratches from the underbrush and no mushrooms. "What is this?" she wanted to know in her charming accent. Eventually, friends took her morel hunting and they found some. "This is hard work — one here, one there," she said. "Why don't these things grow all together in one place?"
Wouldn't you know it? Bobby walked into the office the other day with a trophy morel — at least nine inches long. "Look what I found," he said, and we were duly impressed. I took pictures.
Bobby knows morel season, having grown up around here. And he knows the best places to hunt. His dad used to take him morel hunting around Enterprise. "I was only about five," he said. "We'd be walking in the woods and Dad would say, 'You've got to be quiet or the mushrooms will go back down into the ground,' and I believed him!" Bobby was laughing. "I told that same story to my kids and now my daughter and son carry on the ritual with their children."
Bobby said that the biggest morel his father ever found weighed about three pounds. He also told me that last year when the snow came in April he went out hunting morels and gathered them until he couldn't carry any more. That's the best story I've heard this season.
The seasons roll around and now it is usually peony season in Ramona, Usually, we are cutting peony buds and refrigerating them until Memorial Day. Wouldn't you know it — this year, Memorial Day is early and the peonies are late. "Water them," Margaret told me, "I think that will make them bloom faster."
It's another day in the country and I've got a lot of watering to do because we've got a jillion flower arrangements to make for decorating graves and we need it to be peony season! Now!
