Mushrooms, sometimes called toadstools, are the visible reproductive (fruiting) structures of some types of fungi. Although the umbrella-shaped fruiting body is the most common and well known, mushrooms display a great variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Some other fruiting bodies encountered in lawns include puffballs, stinkhorns, and bird’s nests, descriptive names that reveal the diversity of forms among mushrooms. But regardless of shape, the purpose of all fruiting bodies is to house and then disseminate spores, the reproductive units of fungi. ...
Because mushrooms are merely the fruiting bodies of fungi, removing them doesn’t kill the underground mycelia from which they are growing. Picking mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, or other reproductive structures soon after they appear might prevent their spores from spreading to new sites. However, because most spores are windblown long distances, they can easily come into a lawn from neighboring areas. The primary reasons for removing mushrooms from lawns are to keep them away from children and pets and to improve a lawn’s appearance.
Of course there must be a fix for this. How can anyone suffer a lawn without a consistent and vigorous green glow: well watered, precisely mowed, weedless, dog-shitless, without anthills or gopher burrows, no grazing sheep and no loud children shouting and playing -- a barefooted joy reminding us of freedom and the fourth of july.
We will have it all no matter what gets in our way.
This is how we build our earth.
But sometimes nature ruins things for us: inconvenient, multifarious, sloppy, ugly, fickle, dangerous, sly, uncaring, uncomfortable, filled with bugs, always sinister, who can stand it?
Worse, come creeping these malcontents:
Mushrooms
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
Just as bad as subversive fungi, actual living insentient creatures who cannot be threatened and intimidated or driven to despair and suicide plot to destroy your healthiest aspirations. These creatures: beetles/ants/worms/grubs/roaches/shrews/flies/bugs/snakes/newts/toads/birds/spiders/ticks/mice/chipmunks/ ... sometimes we must wonder what that mangod was thinking to give humans dominion over all this! Who can manage it?
But don't worry. There's a fix in the air, (you can smell it when it has been applied) a certain chemical soup that can be applied to ensure a healthy look to your lawn. These creatures that do not count, all but us, cannot be considered as meaningful, certainly not sentient, have no right to destroy your happiness, do they? Mosquitoes and moths, gnats and bees, stinging flies and gluttonous caterpillars, ladybugs and aphids, wasps and snails ... how do we tolerate them?
Nowadays, fortunately, modernity brings us safety:
So the old dangerous primitive insecticides have been replaced with modern ultra-safe insecticides that are safe for you, your children and your pets. The insecticides have changed dramatically over the past 40 years - but nobody changed the law for posting signs. And that is why I post your property with a warning telling you to stay off until dry - because of an outdated law.Those good-doers don't realize how safe our chemicals have become, (thanks to science and the virtue of commerce) -- so, besides all other living things, we must endure antiquated laws reminding us of a time when chemicals weren't so safe for us. Annoying, neh?
This is how we build a world, one lawn at a time.
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