Bessigne à la Façon de Jeannette

Puffballs seem to come and go in one’s life. For the last decade in our Devon garden, each autumn, within a few feet of the compost heap, several specimens of Lycoperdum giganteum, the giant puffball, have appeared mysteriously, almost overnight. Some of my friends in the Ardèche say that puffballs, known as la bessigne or la vesse de loup géante, are now less common than a generation ago. But when they do appear, they are seized upon and have even been fought over in t