Fungus, the ever overlooked fellow under our feet, will continue to teach us as we walk this earth. In Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web School, we’re learning the importance of balancing the life in the soil, and fungus plays a key role. From what I understand, (and I still have a lot to learn) fungus is the link between available nutrients and plants. They are the decomposers of organic matter, breaking it down into nutrients that are then available for all the organisms in the soil to eat, who make it available to the plants. If you have an abundance of a particular type of fungus in the soil, it will manifest a bloom, like the one you see here, a reminder of all the work being performed underground… unless you spray pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, then you wage the violence of wiping it all out. Most agricultural fields today are dominated by a few strains of bacteria, where a forest floor is mostly fungus. We need to protect this overlooked fellow under our feet.

~Joy