So here is the view out our porch window. Can't show you the inside of the apartment yet -- it is still a wreck full of unpacked books and shelves waiting to be built.The pond has brought endless entertainment. Each night we walk Obadiah around it and catch frogs. Grace and Ruth are becoming expert frog catchers. Lydia carries whatever they catch (being especially partial to the "babies"). There is so much squealing and jumping around (by the girls not the frogs) I am worried they are going to squish one. They drop the poor creatures so many times, I am certain all the frogs in this area will have brain damage before we leave. We have also found lots of tree frogs. Can't seem to catch any of those though -- they be goooood jumpers. We do have to shoo them off our car though. We also haven't been able to catch any of the lizards either; but not for lack of trying (more squealing and jumping around). Grace did cut the tail off of one with a golf putter (long story). Lydia was a wreck when that happened. Those of you who know her can only imagine!!! In addition to frogs and lizards we have been enjoying ducks and an occasional heron at the pond.
Do any of you remember those long off college days at UW-Madison? Anyone remember the infamous mycology class and my great success with mushrooms (this to be read with great amounts of sarcasm)? Well, it all paid off. We have found lots of mushrooms all around the apartment complex and we are having a grand time keying them out. Here is one of our favorites.
A lovely spore print. The girls were very excited when they saw that the above white mushroom produced such a lovely blue-green spore.
We keyed this out to be Chlorophyllum molybdites (Lepiota Morgannii) the Green-spored mushroom. Turns out it is highly poisonous if eaten.
We have not idea what this one is, but we really found it interesting. It was very slimey and didn't produce a spore print on the brown paper. We need to find another one and try again on black paper (black paper is supposed to be used for spore printing).
We found a couple other little brown mushrooms that didn't make spore prints for us either. Apparently one must always have black paper on hand!!
In any case we had lots of fun!
