I’ve been fighting a long block, not able to choose among the many writing and art projects I’ve begun something I feel passionately enough about to devote the year or two it takes to finish one of them. Even the children’s books, which involve hundreds of watercolor illustrations (several for each one I actually use), take years for me to complete. Usually I have no problem with this, but this year I couldn’t decide.

And then, what should come along but all that rain! Hey, mushroom hunters love rain. So while I’ve been grieving the absence of a real summer, I’ve been tracking those big green blotches creeping from west to east on our Michigan radar. I celebrate rain. I hope for rain. I go hiking in the rain.

And I have been rewarded with mushroom hauls unequaled for years. I have gone hunting in familiar places, new places, by myself, with friends, and, most interesting of all, with the Michigan Mushroom Hunters Club, located mostly in southeastern Michigan. Here I have the input of the experts, if not always professional, at least very knowledgeable amateurs.

I am having so much fun! And that is usually how I know that I am on a successful project: the more fun I have writing this book, the more fun you will have reading it.