steve has a new hat

my husband is a very bright, curious, and passionate man. which means he has a lot interests. some might call him a modern-day renaissance man. others might call him a smart guy with ADD tendencies. as with all generalization, the truth is somewhere in the middle. as steve’s wife, i often benefit from his voracious intellectual appetite–he speaks fluent french, he’s become an accomplished cook, he edits almost everything i write, i rely on his big brain for remembering names of flora and fauna…the list is quite long actually. but i also suffer the flip side of his far flung, often short-lived, deep dives–primarily his constant and relentless feelings of never having enough hours in day. he hurries through every day, trying to fit in time for all his interests, and inevitably hits a wall of fatigue about 9 pm every night. and then once a year he crashes, and can’t understand why he can’t make more progress on the things that matter most to him. anyway, all that was to explain why “steve’s new hat” is both good and maybe not so good, but probably mostly good. his newest hobby/passion/interest is northern permaculture. he wants to turn our three acres into a northern food forest. and since we have mostly shade, he is starting with mushrooms. these are wine cap mushrooms steve cultivated this year. they are easy to grow, and are ranked as  “choice”  for eating, closely resembling portabellos. so, steve has a new hat–mushroom farmer. and i will get some nice STILL subjects. and we will enjoy some mushroom risotto tonight. but steve is already behind on his manuscript deadline to his publisher. all the curiosity and passion in the world, cannot not change the hard limit of the 24 hour day. i will enjoy my risotto on the deck with a glass of wine made by our friends in France, and watch steve’s existential crisis play out. it’s like watching hamlet once a year, for the past 34 years.

wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata)