Moss and Mushroom Monday!

Artist Keiko Narahashi posted about this little surprise that popped up in a large terrarium. This is a neat story that illustrates the more positive side of terrarium stow-aways. When you include plants or soil from the wild in your terrariums you can never be sure of what kind of organisms may be hitching a ride. More common stowaways include seedlings, pill bugs, snail eggs and earth worms. However this stunning yellow fungus is a rather beautiful surprise. For more info on terrarium pests see here.

Keiko says:
I collect plants, moss, rocks, etc, from the woods for my terrariums, so along with those specimen come all manner of invisible (to my eye) life forms. At first, I was repulsed by the creatures that would hatch or crawl out of the dirt, the little pellets they produced, the mold, and the general decay. I was frustrated by the transformations in these enclosed environments that I had carefully designed and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to “manage” the undesirable elements. Luckily, for these elements, my innate laziness won out and I started letting them alone.

Since then, I have discovered that everything has a life cycle, including mold. I have learned that a pill bug can live for a year (I still can’t figure out what it eats). I have learned to stop imposing my sense of order and prettiness where it doesn’t belong.

And, every once in a while, something entirely unexpected happens. Like this.

http://www.keikonarahashi.com