If I Were a Lactobacillus

Here is another gift idea. Find a microscope and take pictures of things you see in it. You can turn the photos into T shirts, earrings, whatever you like. Like labels for your salsa, if you are still making it.

Salsa label directions:
You will need one moldy tomato.

You may have to buy a tomato for this. Or, go to a cafeteria and wait until someone pitches their tomato slice from lunch. That shouldn't take long. Leave it out for a few days, covered with an inverted glass, until it looks like the photo on the left. Mix some of the mold with a drop of water, and put it on a slide. What can you find?
This tomato has some Botrytis. The conidia (spores) look like tiny transparent grapes.
Take some pictures, and voila! You can use a regular digital camera for this - hold it up to the eyepiece and cup one hand around the edge between the two, to block extra light from getting in. I was going to post the label here too, but my program froze up before I could save the artwork....

Below is something slightly different. It's a snowflake-like pollen grain. In reality it is about 12 microns across.

If I were a juicy lactobacillus in a spoon of yogurt, this dandelion pollen grain would be the size of a large apple tree. That is, if the dandelion pollen fell in the yogurt. Otherwise I wouldn't even meet it. But the Botrytis spore on the tomato would think the pollen grain looked like a mini van. Actually it wouldn't look like that, because spores don't have eyes. And pollen doesn't have wheels or automatic windows.

The ever so melancholy time of year is coming in, when living things try to sneak off and take a break every chance they get. I sometimes forget to check on the Ganoderma fungus. It is alive - slowly extending its mycelial range in four 64 oz. size oatmeal containers now. They all live on top of the refrigerator, kind of like a trailer park, except when they go in the oven for a warm-up. . They know it is approaching the end of fall as well. They would like to come to a grinding halt, but that is a bad idea, because I won't know how to wake them up later. I will turn on the oven, and pop them in on warm overnight. Maybe tomorrow morning they will stretch their tiny white limbs and go for a walk through the sawdust.