"A rolling stone gathers no moss"

As I ventured out this week to see the living organisms in my yard this week, I noticed this moss on some non-moving stones. I have noticed it before but really took a look at it, as that is the purpose of this blog...

Here it is, as close as i could get the ole iPhone to focus. This moss is growing on a retaining wall, so it is literally growing on concrete, which is pretty hard to do. It is just hanging out with some of it's buddies too!

Moss is a non-vascular plant. It is defined by dictionary.com as "any tiny, leafy-stemmed, flowerless plant of the class Musci, reproducing by spores and growing in tufts, sods, or mats on moist ground, tree trunks, rocks, etc."

Moss uses diffusion to carry water and nutrients throughout the plants and this is why they cannot grow very far from their source of water. This can be seen in these photos.

           

I tried to identify the type of moss by some Googling, but couldn't actually identify it. I looked at this doc , but couldn't diversify it. Does anyone know what this is?

So... my back yard is an ecosystem

Unfortunately my backyard is still covered in several inches of snow, so traipsing about in it is somewhat difficult, but I can still see things from the warmth of my home and I decided to summarize on what is out there and then I will be able to examine it very closely throughout the rest of the semester.

First off to go back to the title. My backyard is an ecosystem. Here is the definition:

ec·o·sys·tem 
/ˈekōˌsistəm/
Noun
A biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

My backyard is a community full of plants, animals, bacteria, fungus and protists. Here is a picture from a few months ago (actually from the real estate listing).

So from this picture I can see a few trees and they appear to be of different varieties. I am not a botanist and have no idea what these are but I looked up common trees in New England and found this link. I will use this to identify these during the spring.

I can see grass, which is a plant, I also can see some kind of bush in the back of the yard as well. I also have a couple planters off to the side which appear to be filled with death from last year's vegetable garden. We will take a closer look at that in a few weeks as well.

Also I know that there is a plethora of bugs and insects living in there as well, even though we can't see them either. I will make sure when I start planting I snap some pics and identify these little guys.  I found this site that will help me in identifying them.

I also know of at least one animal living in my back yard, a squirrel. The previous owner told me about him and his "work" routine. He runs across the the fence on the left of this picture around 8 in the morning then runs back around 6, he may go back and forth many other times but she saw him on this pretty regular schedule.

His a pic of him before I left for work one morning.

So I hope you will continue with me and my journey through my backyard. I will hopefully be able to find something interesting, as they say even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Biology in my backyard!!!

Is Biology really in my backyard?

Of course it is...

I have a plethora of biology. The reason that there biology in my backyard is because many things live there and by definition biology is the study of living things.

bi·ol·o·gy  

/bīˈäləjē/

Noun

The study of living organisms, divided into many specialized fields. The plants and animals of a particular area.

In my backyard I have several species of plants, insects and animals. I moved to the house in the winter so I haven't had a great chance to examine it closely but as we go through the semester and spring I will explore and enlighten you with the results of my findings :)

I am kind of a nerd and got a cool camera a few years ago (Nikon D5000) and haven't really invested the time to really learn how to use it, but with the BLIZZARD of 13 I thought is was a good time to make a time lapse video. So here is my back yard from 12pm-5pm on 2/8/13.