During my time at the BBC in Oxfordshire, I was invited to be an auctioneer for a charity evening in the small village of Bladen (the final resting place of Sir Winston Churchill).

Before the event began, there was the usual opportunity to peruse the lots going under the hammer. One of these caught our attention: a wooden carving of some mushrooms, standing about as tall as me. It had been carved by someone with considerable talent out of a piece of wood from the nearby Blenheim Estate.

‘Wouldn’t that look fantastic in Mallorca?’ I said to The Boss, mindful that we’d soon be moving from the UK to our new home on the Spanish island. Fortunately, he agreed. As the auctioneer, I couldn’t bid for the item, so The Boss agreed to do it from his seat in the audience.

We weren’t the only ones lusting after this gorgeous garden ornament. Sadly for us (but happily for the charity in question), the carving went for a much higher bid than we could manage.

However, after the auction was over, we met the artisan who’d made the mushrooms and when we told him we’d liked to have bought his carving he offered to make us one, and we agreed on a price.

Mushrooms to Mallorca

Our wonderful mushrooms made the trip to Mallorca without incident and were eventually installed in our fledgling garden in a spot between two agaves. Have you any idea how enormous agaves can grow? We didn’t when we planted these two small ones – gifts from a kind neighbour.

Before long, the mushroom carving was hemmed in by agaves of a matching height. Agaves have dangerous spikes on the tips and sides of the ‘leaves’ and close contact is best avoided. We left our wooden feature where it was until it was no longer fully visible.

When we started our latest garden project (not yet finished, folks), we decided to liberate our mushrooms from their ‘prison’, only to find the wood had dried out and the mushrooms had split vertically into two separate garden ornaments, being held up by their captors. Inevitably, The Boss sustained an unfortunate number of attacks from the spiny agave ‘leaves’ in the process of retrieving our wooden feature. One of which required a quick visit to the local Urgències hospital department, some antihistamine pills and anti-inflammatory cream.

New Lease of Life

The Boss did a fantastic job of glueing the two halves of our wooden garden feature together, and we found a new location for it under our rather handsome tree, where we’d be able to enjoy looking at it. The next job would be for me to give it some wood treatment. But before I could do that, a freak, strong gust of wind blew through the garden and felled the feature – splitting it back into two.

Now, where did we put the rest of that glue?

Jan Edwards ©2021