Ben and Heidi, our soon-to-be neighbors, who are busily rehabbing across the street from the apartment (their progress makes my head spin!) commented last week during the 14th Street Mall tour and open house that it had been quite a while since I'd updated here. This is true; we had some truly awful computer problems, and we were reduced to getting on the Internet via a tiny Eee! netbook, which has a keyboard about the size of three saltine crackers laid end-to-end (not really conducive to blogging). Also, we were unable to dowloand any photos from our camera to its not very hefty memory. This weekend our new tower finally arrived, and we're back up to speed with the computer. So, back up to speed with this little project (hi Ben and Heidi!)So, progress: we've walked through the house with what we hope will be our general contractor and our brickmason (more on that later) in order to prep all our paperwork for the bank. But what really cheered my spirits was receiving our garden lease paperwork from LRA (aka the City of St. Louis' empty building and empty lot division), which I signed and returned to Mrs. Warfield at City Hall, with a money order for $5, which gives us the right to mow 7,000 s.f. of grass, though my plan is to plant the ground up with water-conserving native plants that don't require upkeep. We're expressedly prohibited from turning the lot into 1. an obstacle course or 2. a baseball diamond or 3. erecting playground equipment on the site - they have nothing to fear, cleaning and planting will keep us plenty busy, with no time and energy left over to channel towards building playground equipment, missle silos or anything else on this spot.
In any case, on Saturday, we wandered over to our new leased lot, next door to the Little Easy, to check out the space. It looks like we'll be purchasing a large roll of trash bags and doing a spring cleanup to get rid of all the Night Train bottles, empty beer cans and misc. weird paper trash. I think much of that has blown there; just to the right of the lot there are two empty LRA buildings which Barbara has dubbed "The Twins;" one suffered a fire, when I'm not sure, but the windowsills are charred. It appears that someone was bunking down there at one point, judging from the discarded clothing, sleeping bags and empty White Castle packages. Maybe someone lit a drum one cold night to stay warm? In any case, the trees next to the house didn't burn, and while they are pretty gnarled and need to be trimmed, they're still standing. While inspecting them, we found the very alarming fugi above growing out of a wound in one of them. Ugh!
My first fear was that it was some sort of toxic puffball that was going to explode and blow poisonous spores all over the lot. Like there's not enough to do with the soil testing and remediating for lead, arsenic and who knows what else that's left over from the building rubble under the grass. Turns out, though, and this may be even more alarming than the thought that this is some sort of noxious Truffala from outer space, is that this is, believe it or not, a culinary delicacy. As a matter of fact, it's even medicinal. Yes, folks, you are looking at a rather dingy example of the hairy tooth fungus (it even sounds awful, doesn't it?), aka "Lion's Mane," aka "Monkey Head," aka "Hedgehog Fungus," aka "Pom Pom mushroom," aka Hericium erinaceus. Gourmands grow it on purpose (you can even buy a kit), and foragers charge a pretty penny for it at farmer's markets. When not covered in soot, these little guys are snowy white (one description I read compared it to "a polar bear's paw") and, like all exotic foods, it "tastes like chicken." I do not recommend anyone coming by to pluck it off the tree and fry it up with horse chestnuts and pea pods, though. No, this is one grizzled old bear's paw/monkey head/pom pom/hedgehog. Lord knows how long it's been there. I took it as an immensely positive sign, however, that it's been able thrive despite the car exhaust, Night Train bottles and of course the blaze from the building next door. As toothy and hairy and spine-tingling as it is, it's also a mighty sign of life. A medicinal mushroom. A fantastic omen. Like a lot of things on the northside, you can't judge by appearances; lurking under the duskiest and off-putting exteriors, there's medicine and nourishment, waiting to be acknowledged.
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