Bolete Homework, Part I

Ms. Graveyard Dirt gave her readers an assignment: Find a bolete!

I had heard of boletes before, but my earlier enthusiasm for mushrooms never really got very far.  And back home, I never managed to find one.  I saw my first one this year, actually.  It stuck out at me because I'd read about them but never seen them, so when I finally did I was excited like I'd found some mythical creature in the woods.  But I left it alone, because it had been awhile and I didn't quite remember how safe they were.

So of course, a few days after, there winds up being a whole lesson on mushroom hunting in my RSS feed, with instructions to go find one.

I went back to where I had found that first one, but it was dead, black, and shriveled.  And even though I looked all through the woods, I had no luck finding any other boletes.  I did manage to find some other fungus, though.  There were a few gilled mushrooms, and some kind of bright neon yellow lumpy thing on a dead log.  Nothing that color could possibly be edible, I thought.

I think it had just been too dry for mushrooms.  I didn't come back completely empty handed, though.  I found a beautiful yellow feather, and a glass bottle that was broken in just such a way that I think it'll make a nice candle holder once I've washed it off.