Mushrooms and Other Science Experiments

In Julia's science study this year, she's instructed to find mushrooms and examine their spores under the microscope. There's no shortage of mushrooms in our neighbor's yard! He's never home. I think he stays on his fishing boat about 11 1/2 months of the year. So ... we use his yard as our doggies' potty stop. That's a bit embarrassing, so I whispered it. The result is, a banner crop of mushrooms!!

I don't know whether that's true -- that doggie poop yields mushrooms. But it's a fine coincidence if not. Above you see the usual pink/red ones. And below an odd gray one that hugs the ground.

Above, a smooth yellow one, and below a strange brown one with kind of feathered edges.

These round brown ones are common, but below you see one that has a "skirt."

Above are some yellowish, leather-like mushrooms in clumps. And finally a fine beige one with rippled edges.

What about this strange thing?

Julia looked at them all and could find no spores. The mushrooms were mature and open, and had dropped all their spores, I guess. Finally she found a small, new mushroom, and it obliged.
She was also supposed to grow some mold on food, so we did as the textbook said and placed some homemade jam, an apple slice, and some bread on a plate. I supplied a store-bought bread and a homemade, hoping that the homemade, without preservatives, would provide her with some nice mold sooner.

We placed the plate outside with a gauze cover, but that didn't keep the yellow jackets from getting into the jam. She dampened the bread to keep it moist, and we brought the plate in from the rain. It even lived in the garage for a few days. At last I told her just to put the plate in the kitchen, covered with plastic.

But none of it ever grew any mold. Why? In desperation, since she really needed some moldy food, I decided the fastest course of action was simply to open the refrigerator and see what was growing in there. In spite of four -- yes, that's right, four! -- open containers of sour cream, none of them yielded any mold. At last I pulled out some old yogurt with a little flower of black mold in its lid. And then, the piece de resistance:  a jar of homemade ranch dressing that I'd used only the night before. I'd noticed that it was a bit scary. But I'm not much scared by such things. I told her to scrape some gummy brown scum from the inside of the lid and see what she found.

She informed me I should not eat any more of that dressing. It was "alive and wriggling," as Gollum would say.

I guess there's a limit to how much "live food" you should keep around the house, even if you are a green foodie type. But they sure are handy for science experiments!