Lately, it has been quite difficult to find mushrooms growing around my house.
Usually, I can find different kinds of mushrooms in the area behind the house. It tends to stay more humid there, with plenty of decaying wood and old trees, so there is almost always something growing somewhere.
But for almost two months, we have barely had any rain. The ground has started to dry out, some of the areas that were usually moist have become hard and dry, and even some of the old, decaying trees have lost much of their moisture.
So lately, I have rarely seen any mushrooms at all.
A few days ago, it finally rained, but it was only a short shower. By the next morning, the water had already disappeared without leaving much trace. The dry soil and wood didn't seem to get enough moisture for mushrooms to start growing again. I thought I would have to wait a little longer.
Apparently, I was wrong. This morning, while I was about to wash my hands at the water tap beside the house, I noticed something quite surprising.
There were tiny mushrooms growing on the ground.
And there wasn't just one or two. There were quite a few of them, with tiny white caps and very thin, almost translucent stems. At first, I thought they had appeared because of the rain a few days ago. But after looking at the area more carefully, I don't think that was the reason.
The mushrooms were growing right around the water tap, an area that often gets a little wet and sometimes forms a small puddle. I also noticed that over the past few days, my mother had often been pouring the water left from washing rice around that area.
So while most of the yard had been drying out, this small patch of ground was still getting moisture on a regular basis.
Apparently, that was enough for these tiny mushrooms to appear.
I don't know exactly when they started growing. They might have already been there for a while, and I simply hadn't noticed them until this morning. Either way, after going so long without seeing mushrooms, finding them again felt surprisingly nice.
Finally, I found mushrooms again.
After seeing the tiny mushrooms, I became curious and decided to check the area behind the house. That's where I found another mushroom. This one was growing on the remains of a dead oil palm tree.
What caught my attention at first was the area underneath the mushroom cap.
From a certain angle, it looked as if the mushroom had some kind of reflection or strange shadow underneath it. For a moment, I thought there was something interesting happening on the surface of the wood. But when I looked more closely, I realized that it wasn't a reflection at all. It was actually fine material or spores that had fallen from the mushroom and accumulated on the surface of the wood, creating what looked like a shadow underneath it.
Little things like this are one of the reasons I enjoy photographing mushrooms. Sometimes, something that looks like part of the mushroom turns out to be something completely different. You have to take a closer look to understand what you're actually seeing.
I was simply happy to see mushrooms growing again.
After almost two months of watching the soil and old wood around the house become increasingly dry, these two small discoveries felt like a little reminder that fungi only need the right conditions to return.
It doesn't always have to be after heavy rain. Sometimes, a little moisture around a water tap, along with some leftover rice-washing water, can be enough to create a tiny place where mushrooms can grow. And perhaps that's what I enjoy most about looking for mushrooms around my home.
I never really know where they are going to appear next.