The Outdoor Hour #4

Challenge number 4 is upon us! This is fun! I'm really enjoying having a little 'focus' to our time outside. It's great to have a 'starting point' and then see where it leads us... I'm just not good with a 'blank canvas', so a little encouragement is great for me! And I try to encourage the kids to look for whatever interests them too. Bubbles likes the idea of going out and doing a 'challenge', though I suspect that she is hoping for some kind of medal at the end of it all!! If she learns to love this wonderful world around us which God has made, then that will be medal enough... though it may take her a while to realise that!

This week our 'nature walk' kind of happened in a rather bizarre and haphazard way... while we were walking through Dalkeith (it never ceases to amaze me what you can find on Wikipedia!) to the Council Offices... which just goes to show that one doesn't need to be confined to the green open spaces in order to observe nature, and that any and every opportunity can be taken to really observe our surroundings. We just looked around us as we walked, and I have to say that the pigeons and the odd tree here and there where far more worth a look than most of the buildings around us!

And so we arrived at the Council Offices and we traipsed up the path - "Please keep to the path", was the command on the notices... so we duly kept ourselves there and did not stray onto the few feet of tempting moss-ridden green grass. And we did what had to be done, and turned tail and headed out again - only on the path mind - and then there IT was... nothing particularly beautiful about it, no wonderful colours to gasp at or attract the eye... but it sure attracted the eye of Bubbles - a really quite large clump of Lichen sitting on the grass (don't worry, we didn't stray off the path - it was within arms reach!)... we tried to see where it could have come from - I'm sure the folk in the council office (big glass fronted rooms) must have wondered why we suddenly came to a stop and started seemingly examining the sky! - but couldn't really work it out... maybe it came off the roof? It sure wasn't part of the grass anyway, as I'm pretty sure Lichen doesn't grow on grass - moss, yes; Lichen? don't think so. Perhaps some passing bird, coming for a breather on the roof, knocked it off.

click picture for a close-up - it's fascinating!

Anyway, no matter where it came from... it was a wonderful find for us! I think it's a Foliose Lichen (leafy)... annoyingly, most of my field guides are packed up so I can't look it up. I found this wonderful website of British Lichens and if you click on the 'picture index'... wow! What amazing things Lichens are! I wouldn't really class them as 'beautiful'... but they are quite stunning all the same! We haven't tried to journal it this week (being struck down with rotten colds), but I will try to have a go at some point.

Since I'm not sure how much nature walking and journalling we're going to get done over the next few weeks - what with Christmas/New Year and trying to move - we're going to go with Lichen/Moss/Fungi as our Focus Area... I think it will be an easy enough subject matter to study while we're out and about at this time of year, and might be a bit fun and different from the normal things we look for. Comstock is a little shy of much detail of these plants, so I will probably have to Google for some information. I have already found a good Wikipedia entry on Lichen, so I'm sure that will be a good resource.