In the most unexpected places

25 May 2006

Before she went to the supermarket this evening, Mum said that she and I would be having spaghetti bolognese. I said that it would be nice to have mushrooms in the bolognese, but unfortunately we didn’t have any. Since all our veg comes from the farm shop nowadays, rather than the supermarket, this fungal shortage wouldn’t be addressed until the weekend.

Mum and Dad drove off to the supermarket and I carried on my work in the garden. I had been trimming the rosemary hedge in the front garden, using the new clippery-things. Clippers, one might say. They’re a bit heavy and make a loud rattly noise in use, but on the plus side, I could easily maim someone with them.

I slaved away and also scraped up all the crud that accumulates under the hedge – the earth that the blackbirds kick about in gay abandon and the bits of dead rosemary that are shed over time. Rather than put this organic crud in our brown bin for the council to enjoy, I took an executive decision to dump it in our own big compost bin. See, leave me on my own for five minutes and I start making executive decisions.

On lifting the lid of the compost bin, I was greeted by roughly six billion woodlice, a few evil-fanged spiders the size of my head and a maze of ivy shoots creeping about in the dark looking anaemic.

Then something else caught my eye. There, among all the rotting loveliness of our compost, was growing an enormous and perfectly-formed mushroom.

So I picked it and we had it with our spaghetti bolognese.