random thoughts – Day 1,610 – (Wednesday) – backyard crop

The big mushrooms
are back.

It’s time for the backyard crop of weirdness. Almost every year since moving into The BungaLowell, there has appeared in the back yard some sort of big mushroom that is huge. They are often the size of a large dinner roll or a small artisan bread loaf and one day they are just there, as if placed by magic. Or maybe it’s fairies and elves.

This year, instead of one in the usual spot on the side of the yard near the shed, there were three on the opposite side of the yard near the deck, noticed on Monday. Tonight, another was spotted in the center of the yard. A real bumper crop of I don’t know what.

The usual course of things has been that after two or three days they evaporate into a puff of dark dust and disappear. Then it’s like they were never there.

The evening primrose seems to be blooming later than usual. Or maybe my recent accidental, self-imposed in-house incarceration has kept me from noticing and it has blooming for weeks. Without dogs to be let in and out a thousand times a day, I spend much less time in the yard, and then it’s just to mow, which is done as quickly as possible every ten days or so.

There were several years of attempted “gardens” in a big tub on the deck. The cost in money, time, and effort was not justified by the meager yield of six grape tomatoes and ten basil leaves, and the farming life was abandoned. It’s just as well. The heat this summer would likely have served as a big air fryer and cooked everything that the heavy rains didn’t pummel and drown. Or the critters that have eaten the mums and echinacea would have devoured anything that survived in the heat and monsoons, except for the weird giant mushrooms.