My GRANDMOTHER LORNA JEAN DUFTY was the person who got me interested in foraging for edible mushrooms. When I was a small girl, I would tag along behind her as she headed out into the woods or fields around her farm in Oxford county to collect the most delicious wild things, ever.

We would fry them up in a cast iron pan in the kitchen as soon as we got home. I have been looking for mushrooms ever since, with increasing success every year. And, of course, being a mushroomer entails bringing others along, showing how to gently walk, and find, and celebrate. My grandson, Lu, is in the picture, reaching his small arm around behind a clump of lilacs along a chain link fence natty with last year's maple leaf humous to pick a golden morel.

Mushroomers have a reputation for being stingy with information aboutwherethey find these gems. Since we are mushroomers, people askus for information: Where should I look for morels? chanterelles? black trumpet? Whenisit morel season? Is it time for me to set out from downtown Toronto to that field outside of Owen Sound where I found some growing once when I was a newt?

We 'shroom people typically won't tell just anyone the exact location