Some of you have asked how Carl, the Varnished Conk is doing. Quite well, actually. Carl is a fungus, but he is not a mushroom. He's like a shelf fungus you might see on the trunk of a rainforest tree, but he grows right out of the ground. You can see his stem, just behind his ... uh... head. He is more wood-like than a mushroom, and lives on fallen needles and other debris. A forest clean-up fungus! He's about 7 weeks old now.