Gymnosporangium rust, a two-generational fungal disease affecting hawthorns, with the alternate generation affecting junipers. Not lethal, but somewhat debilitating in bad cases (which yours isn't) and can be rather unsightly. Look at the fruit clusters at the top just right of centre, and at the far right, and you can see some of the fruit are swollen, brown and lumpy, instead of green with a black tip. They are fruit infected with the fungus, and shedding spores which go to infect junipers. Infected junipers produce blobs of orangey jelly-like stuff that releases spores which then infect hawthorns again. Resin

"Hopefully you've destroyed it and used some copper sulfate on the soil there." This is NOT good advice. Judging by your picture, that looks like some typical stipitate basidiomycete (gilled mushroom). I can't ID it without some more specific information and/or better pictures. If you want to know exactly what it is, I'd be happy to help you ID it. If you just want to know if it's dangerous for yourself or your plants, I can probably help right here. First, is it actually growing on the plant's roots? It doesn't look like a parasitic fungus to me, but it still could be. It is much more likely to be digesting wood dropped from your plants, or other random organic debris, which would be considered a GOOD thing, as it makes previously unavailable nutrients available to your plants. If it is growing on the roots, it may be parasitic, but it's more likely to be a mycorrhizal fungus, which is one that forms a mutually beneficial relationship with a plant's roots. Basically, many fungi and plants intertwine underground and exchange nutrients with each other, helping each other stay alive and flourish. In fact, most flowering plants have mycorrhizal relations with at least one (and sometimes over 20) fungus. Many plants cannot live without them. As far as your health goes, I highly suggest that you do not eat it, but if animals are eating it, it's likely to not be deadly. It still may cause severe gastrointestinal distress in humans, making you wish you were dead. Concerning copper sulfate: it is a potent fungicide, commonly used to kill parasitic fungi on plants. However, even if this is a parasitic mushroom, treating the soil in your garden with copper sulfate is a bad idea, because it will kill off ALL of the fungi (and many other microorganisms) in your soil, which are super necessary to break down organic material and make it available to your plants, as discussed earlier. If you compost in your yard, fungi and bacteria are vital, and copper sulfate will ruin that. It is also used as an aquatic herbicide and a pesticide, so it's obviously just generally poisonous. Here is a link that might be useful: how to id a mushroom

Mad Gallica - 3 or 4 times is every 6-8 weeks, and we were pushing back old field growth: white pines, staghorn sumac, cherries, and poison ivy. Now the mowing is done mostly to keep the grass from lying flat, which it does if we let it go too long. Hiring a guy with a brush hog twice a year would do it for maintaining a field with no shrubbery. There are parts of our field that only get mown once or twice a year, depending on rate of growth, whether it's too wet to mow in rainy years, etc. Along the interstates, the state of NH only mows once a year in their wildflower patches, usually in August or early September, so that they go to seed. In starting the wildflower patches, they removed the grass, planted the wildflowers in mats of mulch, and just let it go. There are signs specifically alerting their mowers to avoid the wildflower patches. At the same time, I agree that marketers of wildflower seed mixes don't make it clear that simply scattering the seed in an area that already has plants or weed seeds is an exercise in futility. Lindera doesn't grow wild in many areas of NH. It's mostly found in the southern part of the state and towards the coast, but I haven't seen it anywhere, so I have a feeling that we are towards the northern edge of its range and it's uncommon. I bought two last year, and I'll see how they have come through the winter when the snow melts. Currently they are completely buried.

But we don't like the looks of the standard plain old wood vanity :). And, they actually are not really less expensive. For the cost of delivery charges, I would fly there and get to visit family to boot...while enjoying the sleek and modern lines of the IKEA vanity.