Rainy-Day Adventures

Day 20: It's the time of the year when I struggle to find interesting material for my daily posts. That's not to say there's nothing interesting going on in my life. Indeed, I have lots of things to keep me occupied, and right now, the darkfield microscope is pretty close to the top of the list. As a direct result of its acquisition, it's been necessary for me to practice with the microtome to perfect my technique. I've also had to re-learn how to pull stains effectively. Although my pond-water samples haven't yielded up any particularly exciting results, I've found plenty of other things to play with. This morning's exercise was performed on a horseradish leaf stalk. The top four images show a cross-section stained with methylene blue, an unstained longitudinal section, an 800x view of the nuclear material in the same section, and another longitudinal section stained with eosin. The lower row shows an eosin-stained longitudinal section of an iris leaf, unstained epithelial tissue taken from the inside of my cheek, a smear of butter which shows the fat globules, and a piece of pear skin stained with methylene blue. The butter smear reminds me of Aboriginal art!