You Just Never Know When Zombies Will Pop Up

(In advance, either "I'm sorry" or "You're welcome," depending on your opinion of the following strange-even-for-me post.)

Last week, I was fixated on the idea of sharing this with you. Then the weekend rolled around and I lost interest. I seem to be having a hard time maintaining enthusiasm for anything lately. I'm blaming the cosmically lousy summer. It wasn't until July that we had a string of days consistently in the 80s, and they were few and far between. Most of the summer, we've barely been able to achieve 70s, and sometimes not even that. Now, of course, since they're coming to close the pool today, it's beautiful. I was in the pool twice this year. Two times. One plus one. All summer. Gaarrrrggggh.

We've been in this house 13 years, yet every once in a while a plant sprouts in the yard that I've never seen before. When we were preparing the pool area for the season (which feels like about three days ago), I saw a tall, spiky weed that I dubbed "poo-weed." This was because, as I was pulling them so we could spread fresh mulch, I noticed that most of them had... well... dog poo by them. I couldn't say for sure if the plants grew there because of the "organic material," or if the plants somehow made the dogs feel compelled to welcome to the yard in their own special way.

The other newcomers to the yard are an odd type of mushroom. Any time it's dry for a while, followed by a day or two of rain, our mulch does sprout a variety of fungi. When I saw these, though, I knew immediately what they were.

Zombie Penis Mushrooms (tm).

Because, really, what else could they be?

I mentioned them on Facebook, and posted some pictures. I also mentioned it to some other people, and one friend said she had those in her yard, too, and I would be surprised because they "really blow up."

I was momentarily horrified at the thought of exploding zombie bits. Then I realized she probably meant they get all big and umbrella-y on the top like regular mushrooms.

Whew.

After I posted the pictures on Facebook, another friend said that if I dug into the mulch at the base, I would find... well, the roundish objects that you'd expect to find at the bases of such a feature.

I refuse to look. I was having enough trouble trying not to envision zombies lying on their backs under my mulch, thinking happy thoughts.

I raced home from work Friday, ahead of the rain, because I didn't want to risk them all blowing up (or exploding... I was never totally clear on that) before I had recorded them for posterity.

(The one on the right appears to need... a little help. Or a prescription.)

(This is only one patch of them. There must've been a dozen altogether. There's a joke in there about "counting heads," but I'm not going there. Oh, wait... I just did. Oops.)

(No, I did not have anything better to do. Which is terribly, terribly sad.)

While researching what sorts of mushrooms these might be, other than Zombie Penis Mushrooms (tm), I came across - you are not going to believe this - a Zombie Hand Mushroom.

(I think I remember seeing that it was in Malaysia or someplace like that... which is lucky. For you. Because if I had a Zombie Hand Mushroom in my mulch, I would have been perversely compelled to arrange an extraordinarily distasteful tableau with the other mushrooms, take pictures, post them, and offend... pretty much everybody.)

That's it. I'm out of material. Because of the lack of focus thing. Instead, I will invite you to leave a comment with your own Zombie Penis Mushroom (tm) jokes. Or you can think up what drug companies would name a Viagra-like product for zombies.

And people wonder why I haven't been posting as much lately. Now you know.