Lawn Mushrooms

It's been raining a lot. So this morning when my mom went out to mow the lawn, she came across a lot of mushrooms. She took pictures of them and we looked them up on the Internet. I also watched The Science of Life: The World of Fungi on Cosmeo. It was really interesting. I learned a lot about mushrooms!

Here are the pictures my mom took and their scientific names.

Langermannia gigantea (Puff Ball)

Gloeophyllum sepiarium

Agaricus campestris


Macrolepista rachodes

couldn't find the name...

Ruby Falls

Last Saturday we went to Ruby Falls. It was awesome!

We climbed up this really tall tower! I'm afraid of heights, but i did it.

This was the first time my sister and I have ever been in a real cave!

It was really cool inside. Sometimes my dad had to bend over because he was too tall.

Sometimes we had to be careful because in some parts of the cave it was slippery and little drops of water fell.I think this was the first time I had ever been in Tennessee.

There were tons of formations that had names like this one. It looked like tobacco leaves. There were lots of other formations too.

They put lights and a few TV's in the cave for the tours!

Ruby Falls was the prettiest waterfall I have ever seen in my whole life!

For a late lunch we went to Sticky Fingers for some bbq and it was delicous!

Fire, oxygen and an egg

Yesterday we did a science experiment with fire, oxygen, and a hard boiled egg.

Burning uses up oxygen causing a vacuum. Since there is more air pressure outside of the bottle, the egg gets pulled into the jar.

Our jar was too small. It didn't hold enough oxygen to burn the candle long enough to completely pull the egg in. For best results use a glass milk bottle.

Our Garden

Hi readers, this is our fig tree. It has tons of figs!

This is an annual which means it only lives one year, but it came back for another.

Here is our pear tree. The pears are getting bigger.

This is our zucchini plant. We harvested two zucchinies a couple of days ago.

Drama Camp

Last week I went to Drama Camp. It was awesome! Every day had a different theme. Monday was Travel to Mexico. Here I am in my sombrero.

Tuesday's theme was Cruise Ship Travel to the Caribbean.

Here's a mask I made the same day.

Some of the other themes where World of Animals and Fantasy Land.
On the last day we put on a skit and got a bag of goodies. Below is a picture of me with one of the goodies an orphan made for us.

Welcomed Sights

This is a vine. We didn't plant it, but like it and will let it continue to grow.

We didn't plant this either, but was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful flower.

This is our raspberry bush-there are 2 berries so far. We have a blackberry bush that had lots of berrries but the berries didn't ripe right-when dad tried them, they were hard and bitter.

Our Sugar Baby watermelon-this one is about the size of an apple.

Backyard

This is a snake we found in one of the rose bushes. Johnnie, the male cat caught him, but cats like to play with their prey before killing them and while playing with it, the snake got away. This snake was the longest one we've seen in our yard so far. It was a little over 24 inches.

Our fig tree finally has some figs. I've never eaten figs before. I guess I'll find out soon if I like them or not.