Backyard Discovery

I have been taking advantage of this rainy week to get my garden going. I thinned the flowers I planted a few years ago for my friend up the road, which were cropping up in twos and threes this year, and bedded the extras in a little corner of earth outside our back door. I've also been committing more potted succulents to the ground. It is wonderful to see them take to it like babies to water. The first one that was so droopy and yellow in its pot now has more green to show than any of its neighboring plants.

As I was pulling back the weeds and digging a hole with my make-shift gardening tools  (a vintage apple peeler and a plastic sand shovel), I uncovered what appeared to be a purple rock, but when prodded with the peeler, it proved to be jiggly. so I carefully wedged it out of the dirt and onto the walkway.

I pried into the outer layer with no idea what I'd find underneath, but definitely not expecting this little goopy mushroom. A google search revealed that this would have grown into a stinkhorn. There's no telling what shape it would have assumed, just that it would smell terrible. So just as well to be rid of it before it broke the surface.

Otherwise the plants all seem to be getting along well, and the rose bush is just starting to bloom.