At the Bottom of the Garden

When I was little I knew there was a bear at the bottom of the garden. Probably a grizzly. Huge. Scary. Big claws. Big teeth. My mother, oblivious to the peril she was in, would wander about the wilder bits of the garden - it was fairly wild in those days, with the remains of an old air-raid shelter - with apparently no fear of being eaten.

And she never was eaten. The garden, however, was tidied up over the years. I expect the bear moved out, and was replaced by dahlias.

However, yesterday I saw that a little bit of wildness had crept back in and here it is:

Something's been eating it a bit and probably has a stomach-ache by now, if it's what I think it is, which is a fly agaric, because they're poisonous.

Here's another one that's nearby, which has also been nibbled a bit:

They are quite large - several inches across. I can see why they feature so largely in fairy stories - they look slightly unreal, surrounded by all the autumn green and brown. They're like a strange, plastic toy that dates from thousands of years before the days of plastic.

I like a bit of wildness in the garden. Though I'm glad to remember the old poem:

"There are no wolves in England now, nor are there any bears.
You could not meet one after dark upon the nursery stairs."