From termites to antibiotics

While sipping coffee and admiring another beautiful sunrise, J & I noticed some strange small tubes growing out of the ground. We had never seen anything like it before and I instantly thought termites! Not being a big fan of bugs I instantly called Terminex. I described to them these clumps of tubes about four centimeters, gray and brown with something that looked like seeds in them surrounding our baby lemon tree. The person on the phone sounded skeptical regarding the identification but proceeded to arrange for an appointment later in the week.

I then snapped a photo and submitted to google search and this returned nothing but pictures of rattlesnakes. Admittedly for a few minutes I wondered if the black specs could be rattlesnake eggs. Quickly moving past this irrationally, I returned to learning all that I could about termites for the better part of the afternoon. Unfortunately nothing about termites matched the description of our mystery tubes. I had to resign myself to waiting for Terminex's arrival.

Alas our neighbor walked by and I had an "aha"! He happens to be an expert in microbiology and bugs in our area and I urgently expressed we were in need of his expertise . After a few moments of digging, smelling, poking, pulling, crushing, he said, "Um I think this is just a fungus and this looks to be the kind that produces antibiotics. I might have my students come back and take a sample of it. We are studying this sort of thing." He later confirmed this later and told us the common name of it was, "Dung lover's bird's nest." A fungus that grows in soil with manure just like the name suggests. Well I did mix in compost with our regular soil this year and I will reluctantly leave it there for the students to test aware. Maybe one day I can garden and grow my own antibiotics just like lettuce.