Houghton's Garden Walk
I walked through Houghton's Garden, approximately a 10 minute walk from McElroy. The weather was perfect; it was sunny but windy enough to cool me off. Although it wasn't cold like the Fall should feel like, the air had the earthy smell of Fall. It made me nostalgic for the times I would walk around my neighborhood park with my family when the days would begin to get cold. I saw the leaves begin to yellow and fall revealing a golden path of leaves; it was hard to distinguish between the path and what wasn't due to the abundance of leaves. I saw many squirrels and chipmunks fighting for territory and squirrels. As I was walking I also noticed a pond covered with algae, a unicellular eukaryote. A more obvious microbe I saw in the garden was the fungi growing on the trees. To connect the class and my walk, I also was able to recognize that the fungi are heterotrophs as they cannot produce their own food; this may be why it was found exclusively on another tree.