Leaves and Mushrooms

It’s nearly 80 degrees on this posting date, so this is a modified post from 2023.

A great variety of mushrooms have been appearing in people’s yards this season in our Pacific Northwest city.

White bubbles the size of softballs, brown flat tops resembling toadstools in illustrated children’s books, and other shapes seem to be in all but the most fastidiously trimmed yards. And not a morel have I seen.

A garden show commentator told one caller, “A line of mushrooms across a lawn may be an indicator of a dying tree.” Wow! Nearly every tree in the neighborhood must be on its last root. As heard on late night TV advertising, “But wait, there’s more.” Many lawns where there have been no trees during our many years in the neighborhood also have mushrooms. Am I curious enough to do a real study? Nah!

Fallen leaves on the street and sidewalks were as crisp as fresh corn flakes from the box last week and I know it won’t be long until they will be mostly soggy like leftover flakes in milk. One apple on a neighbor’s tree is still clinging to its branch.

I looked again when I read the comic strip where Ed Crankshaft waited for days to capture the last leaf on his tree. The apple was there then, but today it has joined others in their job to start spreading a wild orchard. But this being a critter occupied place, what falls gets eaten.

Last week one man in the neighborhood was blowing leaves to the curb. Today his lawn was as covered as it had been the week before. Perhaps he just needed to get out of the house for a while. It’s historically obvious to me that he’ll have another opportunity.

The most leaves I remember ever seeing were at Ft. Devens, MS, when I was stationed there in 1956. I’d been there in ’55, but it was after casual company grunts had removed all the fallen leaves two, three, or perhaps more times.

A few sexagenarians, many septuagenarians and most octogenarians and nonagenarians probably remember Doris Day and others singing, “…The falling leaves of red and gold…?”

PS: I don’t want to think about, “walking in a winter wonderland” yet!