The desert looks better every day

Thursday, 5:28 pm

Aug

07

2008

I think I’ve mentioned a few times that it has been HUMID here this summer. Not just garden variety humid, but a saturated drippy kind of humid. All the time. Nine days out of ten. There have been precious few days this summer during which the humidity has fallen below 85%, with the greater number of them in the mid 90% range. And, although I’ve run the dehumidifier frequently, it’s apparently not enough. Because......

This afternoon I discovered two cute little mushrooms growing out from behind the backsplash behind my kitchen sink. Really cute little mushrooms. But, ya know, mushrooms do not belong in the house. As long as I’ve lived here I have never had a mushroom grow in the house. This is definitely a first and not something I’m too terribly pleased to see.

I plucked them and tossed them in the trash, but now I’ll need to do something to make sure that their rooty network is dead, dead, dead or they will be back. And their little rooty network consumes organic matter for sustenance...and wood is the most available organic matter for them. In other words, if I don’t kill them dead, dead, dead, they will eat my house.

With the advent of all this endless humidity, I filled a squirt bottle with about ten parts water and one part clorox. I used that solution to spritz around the sink to prevent mildew from growing. If I am anything, I am obsessive about a clean sink. This was, perhaps, not a good idea. The extra moisture apparently was all that the mushroom spores needed. Clorox does not kill mushroom spores, evidently. That requires a fungicide.

I will have to look around to see what the fungicide options are. If anyone has used one to kill household mushrooms before, please do sing out. I’d like to nip this in the bud quickly before I have a forest of them sprouting and a major kitchen project to tackle. Although I’d like to tear out the kitchen counters and backsplash and replace them with something pretty, this wasn’t the year that I planned to do it. Mushrooms. Ick.