lightsinthedistance-modernlife

While using StumbleUpon yesterday, I came across a gardening website that was discussing Red clover ( Trifolium pratense ), a plant native to Europe that has become naturalized in the United States. While reading a little bit about it, I realized that I had never actually associated the small pink flowers with the actual clover itself.  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_clover_closeup.jpg Now, this realization was embarrassing, because I should have made the obvious connection and paid attention to my surroundings. But it was also eye opening that I have been surrounded by clover and these pink flowers all my life, but had never before thought about any connection between the two. Clover has been ubiquitous in my yard, and essentially any other place I've gone in my life, so it's not like this was just a small anomaly.  Red clover itself is pretty interesting. It's part of the legume family, Fabaceae , which includes soybeans, peas, and peanuts. One of the mos...

Back at the start of November, I had the pleasure of accompanying my good friends Ryan and Will to the site of Ryan's capstone project in Lowell. He was looking at a layer of rocks in an outcrop there, and had invited me to come along since he had seen a lot of insects buzzing around during his earlier trips to the outcrop. That was pretty much all the information I needed, so I tagged along to see what all was there, as well as to make sure that Ryan didn't die in a rock slide. Since it was early November by the time we made it out to the outcrop all together, it was a bit chilly and there weren't a huge amount of insects like there had been in September. Not to say there wasn't still a lot of neat things to see, I just didn't end up finding any huge grasshoppers. The first things I came upon were bagworm cases on some branches. Bagworms are in the family Psychidae , and the larvae build cases out of whatever detritus they find around them. It's all held togeth...