Just let go of Juneau, 14 years old, adopted him 12 years ago. A true fetch fiend, and a great guard dog, he was ever vigilant even to his last days. My head knows it was his time, but my heart is fucking ragged right now. RIP Junebug 馃挅
Edit to add: thank you all for your support. I am pretty deeply introverted and don't have many people to lean on. Being able to share this part of his journey has been very helpful with this heavy heart of mine. Thank you all and take care, and for those of you with pets of your own, dote upon them a little extra for me 馃挅
I don't know what the top of this raptor looks like, the closest I've ever gotten is where they perch at the top of this tree. I can tell they have a mostly white belly with black (or dark brown?) feathers along the wings edge. I wish they would have called when I got this video, but not this time. I live well within city limits, so this is an urban setting, although in a small-ish rural town, so not a bustling area. I have become quite fond of them, they regularly return to this tree and I would love to know what kind of raptor my neighbor is c: I am not sure, but thinking perhaps a Swainson's Hawk?
Have wanted some houseplants for my office at home, but it gets practically no light and every plant I have tried has suffered there. Decided to try a "decorative" mushroom instead. Figured the lower degree of natural light will be less detrimental.
This is Oregon Reishi (Ganoderma oregonense). Mixed a colonized bag of millet grain spawn into a sterilized bag of wood-based substrate on 10/31/2025, used impulse sealer to close mixed bag. Substrate bag was fully colonized by 11/05/2025. I used isopropyl to clean some pottery, opened the colonized sub bag, and packed the sub into each pot. Placed the loaded pots into a monotub which has a layer of perlite in it and a water/peroxide solution (didn't measure, just eyeballed it, much more water than peroxide). Set the monotub on top of a kitchen cabinet.
Once a day I went up and just briefly popped open the top to give a gush of fresh air. There are filtered holes in the lid for passive air movement, but I figured a quick open wouldn't hurt, especially after I could see that the mycelium had grown over the upper crust of the substrate. As needed, I topped up water in the tub and also added a splash of peroxide. Took until ~11/17/2025 for some lumps to start forming at the top of the pots.
When I checked Thursday 11/20/2025, those lumps had risen considerably from where they had been, and I saw orange pigmentation beginning to spread.
Just today (11/21/2025) when I went to check, pores have now formed on some of the larger lumps.
Gonna let these hang out in the monotub until they reach the tub's ceiling, then move one into my office and see how it does in there. The rest I will divvy out to interested friends and family c: I figure they will dry out eventually, but I hope when they do that they retain their shape and sorta just become dried "arrangements".
It was crazy timing, too, I had just been thinking about how irritating that fly was, it was an especially loud buzzer. Then spiderfren was like "I gotchu" and snatched it up. MVP
At first I thought my LC was dead because the bag didn't appear to be doing anything a couple weeks after inoculation. Kept it anyway since it didn't seem to be contaminating, and it was alive after all! I don't have an incubator so the cooler temp of my house during the early spring is probably why it took so long to get going. Planted little handful size pockets of grain spawn throughout one of my grow beds, about 4 or 5 inches deep and 6 to 8 inches apart. Later this week I will be putting in the companion plants (tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, squash, and some flowers for attracting pollinators). Hopefully an update will come later this summer if I get any fruiting bodies!
