It’s practically apocryphal by now, the story of the mushrooms which grew under the toilet in the bathroom in our flat on Lynedoch Crescent in Scotland. An old Georgian building with walls that didn’t quite meet, water in between those walls… well. We should be grateful, one supposes, that all we got was mushrooms.
Last night, I went into my office for the first time in sixteen days, and …laughed. I’d bunged some bulbs into a pot of dirt, and gave it scant water before racing out the door. I meant to put the pot out of doors… but didn’t… and now I have…
…paperwhites.
Frankly, I’ll take them over mushrooms. And spiders so big they make noise on the floor. And the wee hamster that someone got into the house and took bites out of our avocados. And all the other weird and wonderful natural surprises, including the scrub jay and the opossum that came in, and the raccoon, and the foxes, and the one skunk outside our flat in Brown Street at which the neighbor yelled nightly, “No! Bad skunk!” … Yeah. I’ll take the flowers.
The natural world never leaves us bored, at least. And, for this, I give thanks.