Fungus Among Us

I don't really know anything about mushrooms or toadstools, but I do know they can be picturesque. It seems like the summer's moisture has reached the right stage so that we've had a bit of an explosion of fungus growths.

This is the view through the window of the Historic Colton House at Museum of Northern Arizona. The garden was carpeted with small examples.

A couple of years ago our neighbor's tree fell over and they removed it, but the stump was left behind. I trimmed around it yesterday with a "weed-eater" and there was nothing noteworthy about it. Today it looked like this.

Just last Saturday I checked our side yard for the presence of Stinkhorns and was relieved to find none. We've been fighting these things for several years. You have to dig them up and we watch for the "eggs" that produce them in hopes that we can dig them up before they erupt. Besides looking truly ugly, they do indeed stink. The aroma is so strong that a single growth, 30 feet away, can be smelled inside Linda's quilt studio when she has the window open - not good. I've never been able to come up with a reason why these things should exist.