09 Oct, 2013
The life cycle of a terrarium filled with moss
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Oh! Things!
I don’t always follow up on older posts, but I wanted to share this one with you today.
Back in June I wrote a post for the UsedEverywhere blog about this amazing moss-filled terrarium we made. (You can read that post right here.)
Sidebar: my kids tease me mercilessly about my love for moss at every possible opportunity. We’ll be hiking in the woods they’ll point and shout: LOOK AT THE PRETTY MOSS MOM and then ask me if I’m going to scoop some up and bring it home with me. (Which I rarely do.)
In my heart I know that they secretly love moss just as much as I do. How could they not? Moss is so cool! So spongy and compact and awesome! Am I right or am I right?
Anyway, yes. That terrarium was created and I wrote about it for the Used blog. And then I needed a good spot to put it. For awhile it was on a sill in our bedroom, and then I put it on my bedside table. And then one evening, just as I was about to pick up my book, I turned around and saw this growing amid my red ceramic toadstools:
Real mushrooms! Mushrooms are AS COOL AS MOSS, if not more so. I guess the spores were in the moss, just waiting for a good opportunity to show off.
It was pretty cool to have live mushrooms but sadly they withered and died within a couple of days. So much for my mushrooms.
After the mushroom episode I moved the terrarium downstairs to our west-facing windowsill. Some of the moss died off but then something ELSE started to grow. Would you look at this:
It’s full of green stuff, and it’s trying its darndest to get out of the jar. I have no idea what that might be, but it’s slowly making an escape. Isn’t that weird? What’s next I wonder?
