Discovering the World in Miniature

Day 27 of Seattle's rainy streak. We're now in second place for Seattle's longest streak of consecutive days of rain. But, as we say in Cascadia -- January showers bring February flowers. In fact, Ibiris, snow drops and lunaria are alreading blooming in the neighborhood with daffodils sending up their turgid stalks in profusion.

Even the mosses are getting ready to boom as you can see if you look closely. (Click on the image for a larger version.) Amid all the pointy leaves you'll find two slender stalks with green flower buds getting ready to bloom. Now that I know they are there I can just make them out with the naked eye but I would never have noticed them without the help of our microscope.

The more you look through a scope the more you realize that entire miniature worlds exist very similar to our own. At the moment we are limited to the tiny but still macroscpic worlds that our 40x scope reveals. But there is a certain appeal to this world of the barely visible. Rather than introducing us to a new and alien world of single celled organisms, our bug scope brings the familiar world visible to the naked eye into greater relief -- showing us details that we would otherwise miss but that can be seen even with a good hand lens. Looking at moss -- something Seattlites can hardly avoid -- is a richer experience knowing that each green clump is a harbinger of Spring.