Given that we're getting very close to Henry David Thoreau's 200th birthday, I've been very much in HDT mode, which is to say, somewhat apologetically, that I haven't really been doing much trekking lately but rather, like Henry, doing most of my exploring very close to home. And that's not a bad thing, since there's always something new to discover, even in the least of exotic circumstances. Case in point: this year, we tried a gardening experiment and used a well-nourished straw bale as a planting medium. The much-hyped method is supposed to yield superior crops, but so far, the only boon is an ongoing series of mushrooms that belong to a group called the Inky Caps. These get the designation for their weird habit of autodigestion, or, as the technical term has it, deliquescence. The ink visible in the back is essential the end game for these intriguing fungi, some of which are eminently edible. I was hoping for something similar here, but when I tried to get a positive ID—NEVER eat mushrooms without one—I learned, from my go-to site, MushroomExpert.com, that, according to its author Micheal Kuo, "the fact that a mushroom's gills liquefy and turn into black goo, it turns out, does not necessarily mean it is closely related to other mushrooms that do the same thing." And, of course, the DNA police have completely revised the old genus Coprinus, which is where I learned, in the Old Days, to place all of the deliquescing fungi. Because it's growing in straw and has those mica-like chips on its cap surface, I suspect it's a member of the Coprinellus clan, but beyond that, I'll leave it to the pros.