Sharing Biology Class: Part II The Galls

 It's time for the second round of the Biology Class series!

This lab that my class and I did last fall had to do with a certain natural phenomenons called "galls."

What are galls you ask?

Galls are those swelled, green balls found on Goldenrod stems. For class the friday before lab that week, our homework was to go out and collect galls. They are most usually found in the giant gatherings of goldenrod (not on singular stalks in the middle of nowhere) and our job was to grab 'em, tag 'em and bag 'em. ....Ok, so tagging didn't happen but all of us brought in twenty or so galls that Monday morning for dissection.

Dissection you say? The whole reason that these galls are in existence is because of the parasitic Gall Fly and Gall Moth. These two insects spend their larval stage inside the galls. Eggs are laid inside the stem, and the gall forms as the eggs grow into maggots. The white plant tissue surrounding the maggot's little hideout serves as it's nutrition and protection (although one type of beetle can sometimes burrow into a gall and feast on the white grub within). Eventually, the maggots mature and emerge from the gall as adults to start the cycle all over.

Anyway, back to dissection. Our job was to take scalpels and cut open those galls. It was a relatively fun class, interuppted here and there by occational cheers along the lines of "Hey guys! I DIDN'T accidently cut through my grub this time!"  We basically had to measure the galls, count the ones that had maggots in them, and examine the inside nutritional tissue.

All in all, galls are pretty cool. The grubs aren't slimy and discusting (they're more like really, really short white earthworms) and I was happy to finally learn what the heck those swollen lumps were on the flowers.

** Thanks to http://www.gpnc.org/goldenro.htm and http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/goldenrod_gall_fly.htm for helping me remember some information!

5 New Things I Experienced in the Last Few Days

1. Ice-skated

2. Tried sushi (only a bite)

3. Saw a live comedian

4. Watched people getting hypnotized

5. Pulled a muscle in my neck trying to keep my balence on a bus that was near it's full capacity of people.

Aaand, I succesfully completed my first day of college. Hurrah!

After all of the orientation things last weekend, it's finally nice to be able to go out and do things on my own. Schedules were so packed (try 8am to 11pm) and even though some were optional, those were the fun ones. It was so awesome though. I'm having a blast, and I just hope that these classes won't be too difficult. So far chemistry seems good, and other classes won't be too awful bad, as long as I can budget my time correctly.

Anyways, although that may not be very interesting to read, I had to get some of the new goings-on off my chest.

So, hooray for good classes, a great schedule and new friends. Cheers!

Sharing Biology Class: Part I

One of the most interesting classes I had last year was A.P. Biology. Yes, I know I wrote about how much it aggravated me, I still think it was pretty darn awesome. This series hopefully depicts the better times I had in the class.

Gross, I know, but that was the very beginning of my favorite class last year.

Our very first lab was studying the eating habits of slugs. This means that our homework that first Friday was to go out and collect at least five slugs, more for extra credit. Our rather large class of nine was successful in our searches for the slimy little critters. I grabbed an old, plastic ice cream tub to house my catches in and dubbed it "The Slug Pad." 

Only when I got to class that Monday did I realize how my seemingly triumphant 12 slugs paled in comparison to one of my lab partner's nearly 200. I thought it was cool that she could get so many! This picture above is only a fraction of her huge tub-full.The class gathered around to wince and gag as she uncovered the overcrowded box.

As class went on and we got through our lab papers, my two lab partners and I were put on Slug Duty as the little slimeballs kept escaping from their prison of plastic. Thank goodness for gloves!

At the end of the lab, a week later, we set our captives free. While dumping out The Slug Pad, I turned over a leaf to find a slug that had laid some eggs! Our class, being the cool kids that we were, turned her into the class pet, Bertha. We made sure to give her water as much as we could remember every day and even gave her a mini-terrarium to house her future babies.

Unfortunately, our beloved Bertha sadly dried out died from the change in surrounding atmosphere.

R.I.P. Bertha! You are sorely missed!

Dear Blog,

     I'm sorry. I've left you out in the cold again. I know it was wrong of me, but I have good reason, I promise, my lonely little blog. These past few weeks, dare I say months, have been excruciatingly busy for me, for it's truely painful to have to deal with

a.) getting up at 4:50am every weekday
b.) spending eight hours at a job that I hate, because we literally can not do anything
c.) knowing that those eight hours of nothing could be spent doing so many more productive things
d.) not being able to do what I need to after work, because I'm too exhausted from trying to look busy all day (I'm not lazy, my boss told me to do this)
e.) knowing I can't relax on the weekend because we have so much going on (not complaining though, because they're all so worth it...they just make me tired is all)
    
     And, on top of this all, I'm trying to get used to the fact that I will soon be surrounded by hundreds of people I don't know, trying to make friends and basically handling living on my own. I'm not entirely scared of this, I mean, home is only a couple hours away and I can contact help whenever I need it. It's just intimidating to know that I won't be seeing anything familiar for at least a couple weeks. I believe I can handle college, it's only the change that I'm hoping I can get used to fast.
    
     It's not you, dearest blog, it's me. Those reasons are why you have been so deprived of new material. When I come home to check all of my e-mails and my facebook, I'm simply too tired to carry on and spend up to an hour writing an entry. I wish not to spend my precious few hours in the evening sucked into cyberspace only to come out moments before bedtime wondering why it's suddenly so dark out. This is summer, the one season a year I have to relax and enjoy being outdoors, the place that I so dearly love.

     So forgive me, my beloved blog, for leaving you for the warm vernal breezes, the cool nights under the stars, the marshmallows toasted over the campfires, and the coziness of a sleeping bag in our tent. Also, for dealing with thank-you cards, spending time with family and for sorting and determining which of my belongings is worthy enough to accompany me to the next stage of my life.

     I promise to always keep you in mind, but I cannot say how often future entries will be posted. I posess no knowledge of how much time I'll have in order to sit and write, although I hope I'll have just a little!

Take care, and I hope to write again soon,
Love,
Holly

Just a Little Note

   
 So this morning I had a little brush with nature again.

Mom was driving me to work this morning and as we pulled to a stop at the bottom of our hill, I saw a deer cross the street into someone's lawn. It wasn't completely out of the ordinary, but I found it interesting that I had just come down from a rural road where deer often frequent, to downtown where the animals under the "wild" category consist mostly of squirrels and crows. It was just a neat beginning to my day.

     And on the way home, just before pulling up to our driveway, a mother turkey crossed the road with  dozen or so of her poults. Again, not strange but just a nice welcome home. 

     I think I'm going to miss all of these little joys that come with living rurally once I go to college. But.. being a biology major, maybe I'll still get to enjoy nature a little bit :) Boy these next three weeks are going to go by fast!

This Is My Car

Or, rather, my family's nonexistant one.
One of the many reasons I haven't written in here since the beginning of the month was because I wasn't here at all last week. We, my family and I, were all set out to go on vacation last Sunday. Our plan was to go to Chestertown, Lake Placid and then Old Forge to do some hiking, kayaking and other awesome things we like to do in the Adirondacks. We have to go through Utica to get where we were going and then continue on route 8 in the direction of Speculator.
Well, we hit the West Canadas and stopped at a picnic spot on West Canada Creek about midday (maybe 1:00) to have lunch. After lots of pictures and lovely turkey sandwiches, we went further down the turn-off road to a possible hiking spot. We all decided we were just a little too tired to hike four miles round trip, so we turned around to rt. 8 and went on our way.
It wasn't twenty minutes later that we turned around a left curve to see a long stretch of road and this car pulling hastily back into a line of about seven. That car had cut in front of a track (Ford) that was pulling a boat on his trailer.
That threw the truck out of control...which sent it fishtailing across the highway. Once we saw that, my dad slowed right down, pulled off the highway and into the grass.  Sooner than we could think, we saw the truck wildly swerving to the left... and then... straight into our left side.
Honestly, it was so fast that I had no time to think. I really thought it would miss us because, you know, things always worked out that way. But, no, I realized it was coming for us when it was about a foot away from the side of the car. We all braced, flinched or both as it drove us into the weeds.
I don't remember hearing anything really, except the impact and the windows blowing out.
When we were stopped, Mom checked to see if we were all ok, and then we got out of the car (note: we were informed later that it is a bad idea to do that).  Mostly, we were cut up from glass and bruised. Dad had the worst of it right under his ribs. The truck driver immediately got out of his truck to ask if we were alright and to see if we needed an ambulance.

The passer was nowhere to be seen. Grr.

Fast forward to when the ambulance came; we were all put in precautionary neck braces and taken all the way back to Utica. Our vacation was going pretty poorly, but we were more concerned about each other at that point. An hour later, we were wheeled into St. Luke's hospital and cleaned up. We were all in shock, which was probably good because it bore the blunt of hearing that Dad was going into surgery for a splenectomy, but bad because our minds were still set on "Ok, so we'll have to cancel the hotel tonight, but maybe tomorrow we can go on our way."
Eventually we figured out the car was taken to Speculator, so we went and cleaned it out the next day. Seeing our things back at the hostpital, the nurses jokingly said we were the most prepared accident victims they'd ever seen. And soon, the shock wore off to a point that we realized we had to cancel all of vacation.
One week later, last Saturday, we came home from Utica after staying with my Aunt and Uncle, at a hotel, and with my mom's cousin. Dad was all stapled up (turns out he could keep his spleen, yay!),-and the rest of us just weary from the tiring previous days.

I'm definitely still feeling it, but we're all a lot better. Several people commented to us that maybe it happened for a reason, and I agree that it's a possibility. Maybe it was saving us from a more terrible accident down the road, or maybe it's the cause for a beneficial effect. I suppose we'll never really know, and all we can do is be really thankful for how it turned out. It could certainly be a whole lot worse!

Happy July!

Finally, summer is here!

     Okay, so it's officially been summer since June 21st, but this weekend really hit things off for me. This month is THE month of summer. There's Independence Day festivities, our town holds its Lumberjack Festival, the weather is hot and several flowers are blooming. Kids don't have to worry about school and seemingly everyone takes a vacation around this time.
     What I like most about summer is the opportunities to be outside. It's warm out, and I enjoy wearing dresses, shorts and skirts. I like taking pictures of flowers and leaves and things as well as just going outside for walks or trips to the state park. Like I said, last weekend was really great for me, and want to know why? It's because I spent most of it outside.
     My grandparents own a little piece of land out in the middle of the woods, a couple miles out of town. It takes quite a while to get there, mostly because the road you travel in on is completely dirt and rocks and you have to drive about 10 mph in order to keep from bouncing up and down too much. Anyway, they built a simple cabin out there and invited my sister and I to sleep over the night before our Independence Day family get together. 
     That first day was kind of cool- around 70 degrees- and after helping unpack the vehicles, my sis and I went around to the stone wall to search for salamanders. Just like that, we caught a black one with white spots that was covered in a slime that resembled Elmer's Glue. The slime made it kind of hard to catch him/her and it took some good scrubbing to get it off our fingers, but it was worth the pictures we got. We returned him/her to the stone wall and moved on into the woods to look under logs and more rocks. There we found mostly slugs, one Red-Backed Salamander and a toad.
     For the rest of the day, we walked around, got our bunks ready for bed and did crossword puzzles. After a delicious steak and potato dinner courtesy of Grandpa, we scratched off a couple lotto tickets and then went to bed.
     The next day we woke up, and had breakfast. Seeing as there no electricity up there, it's understandable that there was no toaster; I instead toasted my cinnamon raisin bagel over the fire, and it was simply fabulous. I then went inside with the others to get ready to welcome the rest of the family. When everyone was there we started one of the best annual meals in the world. First out were the shrimp and drunken shrimp, then was oysters rockefeller, then chicken, clams, macaroni salad, crescent rolls, and fruit salad. It was all delicious, and by dinnertime I only had room for a grilled hotdog (actually, I didn't, but I made room because it looked so good). A couple walks in the woods followed and we just visited until it was dark- and time to go home.
     And that's just one of the reasons I love summer so much. All the fresh air and good spirits. I felt so fresh after coming home, despite missing a shower that morning. Afterwards, we just couldn't help but go back outside to look at the stars. It was one of those super-clear nights when you can almost make out every one of the billions of stars in the milky way- they're not just a cloudy swath in the sky- and we even saw a few shooting stars!
     Oh it was truly the best weekend I've had in awhile! I can't wait to see what the rest of this season brings!