Change Is In The Wind

The summer season is winding down. You can hear it, feel it, and see it. Darlene and I walked around the pond at Madison Park today hoping to catch something interesting in our camera lens. The large flock of geese are now gone...onto the next stop in their annual migration. The pond was littered with fluffy down feathers. The last signs that the geese were even present. There are less dragonflies and butterflies, leaves have the red tinge of changing colors, and flowers are giving up their fragrant blossoms to dead heads. Yes, change is in the air and signs of fall are beginning to appear everywhere.

What is this? You gotta love the internet with so much information at our fingertips. We saw these little blobs of foam on leaves of foliage everywhere. After a quick seach on Google, it didn't take long to find an explanation for the mysterious foam. The tell tale sign of spittle bugs is plant foam. This plant foam will normally appear in the area where the leaf attaches to the stem or where two branches meet. It will look like white foam, a pile of bubbles or a big gob of spit. Fortunately, it doesn't cause any harm to the plant. It is believed that the spittle produced by the spittle bug may serve several functions. The substance provides a moist invironment that keeps this vunerable insect from drying out but it may also be used as a form of protection from predators providing a substance that is distasteful and unpleasant for the predator to seach through.

This goes to show you can learn much from reading blogs. So if you enjoy cruising blogs at work when you should be ummmm working, you can say you're conducting research. So fellow readers, keep blogging :) Er, I mean researching!

I hope you have a safe an enjoyable weekend!