nico6502's Journal

I came back to Houghton Garden, and this time around, the garden looked completely different. There were mountains of brown leaves all around, and you could see through the entire park due to the lack of leaves on the trees. This also made the garden much windier as there was no protection from weather elements, like what we discussed with the Mangroves in class; it was so windy that branches kept falling around me, and one nearly hit me. I couldn't find any animals apart from a large flock of birds in the Weber Conservation Area, where I went to find some animals/insects. It was hard to capture decent pictures of them as they were high up in the trees, and the T kept passing through and scaring them away. Reflecting on why I didn't see that many animals or insects, I've concluded that the cold weather might be why I only found birds on my walk. I didn't even find a single squirrel which on my previous walks was a constant, and I could always count on seeing a few. I found fungi in abundance; now that the trees didn't have as many leaves, I could enter new areas easily, and there I found many fungi. Lastly, I noticed that Houghton Garden had much less foliage than the Weber Conservation Area, which, surprisingly, still had some green.

I came back to Houghton Garden, and this time around, it was much livelier than in the previous visits. This week's theme for the nature walk was plants so I focused on making observations of the four main groups of plants we discussed in class. I did see plants belonging to the four groups but didn't photograph any in the Gymnosperms group. During my visit, I noticed the sheer abundance of plants compared to other types of organisms; they dominated the natural garden and were in every direction you looked. I went to the parts of the garden that I hadn't previously gone to and discovered that the T has a line that cuts right through the garden, which is a pity as I couldn't cross over to the other side, which is the Hammond Pond reservation. The group of plants I enjoyed looking at the most was the angiosperms (flowering plants), as I found them eye-catching. Looking back, this were the least common types of plants in the garden for some reason, which led me to think that flowering plants have more trouble growing in the wild than other types of plants. I think it might have been due to the lack of quality light in the garden as it's composed of large trees towering over it.

I came back to Houghton Garden, as last time was great. This time I went to a different part of the garden that I hadn't explored on the previous visit. I noticed the garden was much bigger than I had originally imagined on my first walk. During this walk, I focused mainly on finding Fungi, given that it was this week's theme for the nature walk. They were very hard to find, as some were well camouflaged and not always on the ground. For instance, one of the fungi that I encountered was growing on a tree, which I didn't know was possible, so I caught it by pure chance. I was under the belief that only moss-like organisms could grow on trees, so I learned something new. Another observation I made was that fungi come in all shapes and forms; for instance, one of the fungi I came across was a red fungus growing on a tree stump, which I originally thought was some trash due to its unusual shape. I'm looking forward to exploring the other parts of Houghton Garden that I still haven't gone to, given that the two areas I've gone to were different in terms of appearances and organisms present.

I walked around for around 35 minutes in Houghton Garden. It's a wild garden with a stream and a lagoon-like pond, the garden also has some nice footpaths to walk around. I related this to the in-class comment that Professor Olins made about trees having a relaxing effect on us, and I felt that during my walk. According to the website, uncommon migrating birds are seen there; unfortunately, I didn't see any of these birds during my walk. It was nice and warm, so I got to see some squirrels running around, especially running away from some dogs that were on a walk. As you progress through the garden, it leads you up a little hill with a stone bench at the top; I sat there for a few minutes enjoying the nature around me and then carried on with my walk.