Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Wow, a family of raccoons!


These raccoons were hanging out beside the road at our Cupertino site.  My entire hiking group got to see them on the first afternoon at Walden West!

Here's a video of the same:

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Bounty of the Walden West Garden

I picked all this stuff from the Walden West garden today!  (Not the bread, though!)  It's pretty amazing to think we could almost live on this stuff... ok, well almost.

Clockwise from lower left:  Strawberries, figs, (some unknown green and purple leaf), chard (the leafy vegetable with red stalk), (arrugula?), Asian pears, apples, pomegranates, eggplant, and lemon cucumbers (round and yellow, center).

PS- Happy Mole Day!  (10/23, as in 6.022x10^23)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Cool piece of wood with moss and lichen

The moss is dark green, and right now it looks like little leaves that are rolled up tight.  The lichen is more of a gray-green color, near the moss.  Moss is a plant, and lichen is (usually) part fungus and part algae (algae is basically a plant).  The fungus and the algae share resources together: the fungus makes the structure, while the algae does photosynthesis and shares glucose with the fungus.  What a brilliant arrangement!