I found these other-worldy fungi while mulching our future veggie garden on Saturday (these are a species of Inky Cap).  The children were resting, and the sun was shining, so I dashed out to work on our sheet-mulched, mounded rows that will be next year’s kitchen garden (the garlic, shallots, onions, leeks are already in the ground, hiding out until spring under thick blankets of straw mulch).

In the unplanted rows were whole villages of  mushrooms covering about 30 sq ft in total, busily converting the manure and kitchen scraps into black gold.

My friend, Sara, who is passionate about mushrooms,  says that these little guys are a type of cup fungus.   There are hundreds, and range from the size of a nickel to the size of my open hand.

They’re not the quaint little toadstools in gnomey tales, but they are definitely strange and fascinating beauties.