When I looked out the window at my tiny backyard this morning, I saw what appeared to be patches of dirt on it that were not there the night before. There are three cuvring, larger patches, each about 4-6 inches wide. One’s maybe a foot and a half long while the other two are closer to six feet in length. There are also smaller patches scattered between them. I think if you were to trace a path connecting all the patches you’d end up with something roughly circular.
Anyway, on closer inspection I found that what looked like dirt were many, many tiny brown dots/balls covering the grass and clover. The color ranged from a deep, almost purple brown to something closer to tan. At first I thought it was a fungus but the dots appeared to be too uniform in size. So my current guess is the eggs of an insect. But how many bugs would it take to lay that many eggs?
Possibly relevant facts that I don’t think are important:
[ul]
[li]I have a dog that relieves herself in the yard. There are some dead, brown patches in the grass from her.[/li][li]I use a standard fertilizer in the recommended density. Last time it was applied was more than a month ago.[/li][li]The neighbors next door moved but have not put on the market or cared for their house. Thus, though there is a fence between our yards, theirs hasn’t been mowed all year.[/li][li]It was a pretty dry spring but in the past month or so we’ve gotten much more rain than normal.[/li][li]I’ve been reading some Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman this past week so I won’t discount out of hand explanations involving alternate planes of existence.[/li][/ul]
So what is this stuff? Is it harmless or do I need to consider liberal applications of fire?
I can’t see the images from here (at work, in my break time), but it sounds to me like someone scattered the compost from a potted plant on your lawn - the circular arcs would be consistent with swinging a pot to try to spread out loose material from it, the tan-brown-yellow balls sound like slow-release fertiliser pellets.
These things aren’t obviously alive or moving at all? The pictures of the blobs on the blades of grass remind me of baby spiders when they first hatch out of the eggs, but they tend to move around a lot.
A further bit of evidence that makes me think they’re eggs is that I believe they were only on the upper part of the grass. They did not tend to cover it all the way to the ground. I didn’t have time to get more hands on this morning, but I believe they’re actually adhered to the grass and not just resting on it.
And when you get a chance to see the images, you’ll be able to see it’s definitely not compost or dirt.
I might have solved this myself. There are some images of slime mold on grass I’ve found that seem pretty close to what I’ve got. Apparently it’s nothing to worry about.
My only previous exposure to slime molds was from Nethack. So at least I have something I can picture when my character has to eat one.
Your lot of rain in a little time comment tips the scales for me to some sort of slime mold. I seem to recall also that some molds and fungi do tend to spread out in a circular or arcing pattern. Think fairy rings.
Of course, I could be all wrong, ianabiologist.
Anyone know what mowing the lawn would do to this?
