Visits to Cranberry Lake

We join with a group og local home schooling families and meet at Cranberry Lake Preserve each week. Some times we can't make it or the weather is too wet, but so far we have done some interesting things.

The first day we searched for slime molds.





I went all by myself on a mycological walk, looking at and discussing mushroom varieties. It was very interesting and I really liked the look of this mushroom.


The experts told us what to look for to determine an edible as opposed to a poisonous mushroom. At the end of the walk I decided I might just stick you what is selling at the supermarket, as interested I am in picking wild mushrooms, I just can't be certain we'd all survive.


One of the other things we have done is make these Aquarium/tereriums from soft drink bottles. Now we have three Beta (Thai Fighting fish) living on our windowsill. The idea is that the fish provides carbon and nitrogen for the plant and the plant will provide oxygen for the fish. The fish could also eat the plant and other algea's that might grow, but it is a carnivore, so we have to feed it. Most water for the plant comes from the wick that passes from the top to the water. So we do also have to add water from time to time.

The purpose of this actiivity is to stimulate the closed ecosystem of the earth. If you could make it big enough for a gold fish (for example), you'd never have to open it to oxygenate or clean the water nor need to feed the fish. Also the water that is used by the plant would partially be released back again into the system as the plant photosymthasises. But because it is small the Thai fighting fish can live in very small amounts of water, so can live in this type of aquarium, but we need to add stuff to the system for all to survive.