Looking Closely: My Plot under a Microscope

At first, I wanted to look at a clod of soil I found in the stream bed by my plot. However, it was uninteresting and, to be honest, barely discernible as dirt with  both types of microscope available.

Mrs. Kitts suggested that I remove one of the small green plants beginning to grow in the soil with a tweezers and view that. So I did, and here's the result under 4x. It was much more interesting than textured brownish black blobs, although difficult to focus.

Using a higher power and increading clarity, I began to see the small walled plant cells that were a part of these tiny green strands growing in the sod. I was fascinated by the colors and structure. I hoped to see actual cells in more detail, but seeing the layers of the plant was interesting.

The structure of the fern was interesting to me because of the crystallized appearance of the cells. They looked like beautiful, tiny glass beads scattered across a perforated paper.

At a higher power, I didn't get a whole lot more detail, but the round, glassy look of the fern cells remained. This image is probably my favorite out of all those I captured and posted because of the diversity of color and the intricacy of the forms in it.

Here's another picture of the fern leaf at 10x on the microscope.

Overall, this wasn't exactly what I expected because only the 4x and 10x magnifications would focus for me (in other words 40x wasn't cooperating), but what I was able to see was astounding and made me appreciate the order of God's creation, down to the tiniest cells of the tiniest plants. He made things that may go unnoticed with the naked eye, but are truly unexpected, functional, and beautiful.