The unseasonably warm weather the past few days was apparently enough to see a mushroom springing up near enough the path I travel to pick up the mail to notice. It was quite large and strange looking, but I didn't have the camera with me, it was gone later, and I didn't want to touch it to avoid becoming the first entry in a new Cursed Thread for 2023.
Though looming larger in my memory, my impression at the time was that it was about 1 1/2" x 2" (or 3x4 cm) and either a puffball or still very rounded with a short stem so it looked like one, flesh pale white and smooth over all but most of the top covered by a net of very pale red filled with fairly pale blue - a true blue as few things in nature are - such that the easiest way to draw it would be to start with pink ovals about the size of a fingertip, edges intersecting but not continuing to overlap after the first two or three until most of the space was filled, then add a squiggle in the center of each that in most cases forms an actual question mark, then fill in the ovals with that pale, icy, sky blue. No noticeable smell, and it did not appear particularly slimy/damp or powdery/dry, just plain like a portabello you might find in the grocery.
After it was gone, there was the sort of lingering smell that suggested a skunk may have been responsible.
Though looming larger in my memory, my impression at the time was that it was about 1 1/2" x 2" (or 3x4 cm) and either a puffball or still very rounded with a short stem so it looked like one, flesh pale white and smooth over all but most of the top covered by a net of very pale red filled with fairly pale blue - a true blue as few things in nature are - such that the easiest way to draw it would be to start with pink ovals about the size of a fingertip, edges intersecting but not continuing to overlap after the first two or three until most of the space was filled, then add a squiggle in the center of each that in most cases forms an actual question mark, then fill in the ovals with that pale, icy, sky blue. No noticeable smell, and it did not appear particularly slimy/damp or powdery/dry, just plain like a portabello you might find in the grocery.
After it was gone, there was the sort of lingering smell that suggested a skunk may have been responsible.
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‎noli esse culus
‎noli esse culus