Early in the morning after crocheting and 'planting' my first mushroom (see a mushroom chronicle, part 1), I started watching for Mr. B to come out and spot it. Yes, I must have an audience for this work! When he came out, I simply had to point it out to him: "Did you see the mushroom under your chocolate-berry bush?" It looks quite real from a distance. He quickly spotted it and walked over to it, then looked at me and asked, "Did you make this?" I quickly confessed, and then had the slightly narcissistic pleasure of watching him show it to Mrs. B.
Naturally I had to make more mushrooms, and by the time I'd used up my skein of Lion Brand Homespun, I'd added seven more fabulous fungi, in different sizes, to the neighborhood crop. A total of three are growing at the original site under Mr. B's chocolate berry bush. Four are peeping out from among the dense blanket of dogbane leaves under a Chinese evergreen elm tree in our parking strip, and one was placed at the base of another elm tree across the street. Alas! That last one seems to have disappeared -- gone the way of the bus-bench upholstery I'd installed on International Yarn Bombing Day in 2012.*
It's been fun to watch various mushroom sightings, and to speculate about occurrences I haven't seen.
A couple of days after the first mushroom was placed (and I think there was probably a smaller one next to it by that time), I looked at the spot and saw that the original mushroom was hovering a little over an inch above the ground. Evidently someone had tried to pick it, but did not complete the heist. Had s/he thought it was real, but was deterred by the sweater-like 'feel,' the tension of the wire base, or the shock of realizing that it might be a valuable piece of art? We'll probably never know.
When there was just one large crocheted mushroom under our evergreen elm, I was sitting at our bistro table in the front garden when two elderly gentlemen walked by, carrying on a lively conversation in Russian. The taller one moved out ahead of his companion and then turned so as to face the mushroom, to which he pointed and, I assume, described. His friend reached his side, turned, spotted the mushroom and literally shouted "MUSHROOM!" Then he turned to face me and asked, "MUSHROOM?" I replied, "MUSHROOM!" He smiled broadly, gave me an enthusiastic 'thumbs up,' and hurried to catch up with his friend.
Sometime after Mr. B's grouping of three mushrooms was complete, his neighbor on the other side noticed what he thought was a proliferation of real mushrooms under the chocolate berry bush. Mr. B disabused Mr. J, whom I later enjoyed joshing.
Will there be a mushroom chronicle, part 3? I sincerely hope so. With a fresh skein of Homespun in hand and my newest mushroom gracing a potted plant in Sacramento, this has become a tale of two cities.
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* Upon looking up the posting where I described that project, I found that I had not written about its loss. Once again, I seem to be setting the record straight.
