Heading to the Royal Botanical Gardens

My permit to sample at the Royal Botanical Gardens came through... by the grace of some higher power... before the long weekend! I am pretty excited. That means that tomorrow I get to head home for the day, and then spend Monday sampling plants at the gardens (which are in Hamilton and Burlington) with my Dad. It's kinda like a mini vacation. I am definitely looking forward to it. September is always a crazy month and this fall term will be crazier than normal. My field work will be never-ending, so hopefully the weather holds out. Just a short update for now. Must get this show on the road.

New sign to deter the traffic from my field

Trying to drain this massive mud puddle

Collecting some data in Wire Fence field

Everyone hard at work

Can't see it here really, but my plots that got driven over!

School work, seeds, seeds, Shelton and more seeds

It has been an interesting weekend. I feared it would be unproductive but it wasn't as bad as I thought. While Saturday was mostly a write off I can proudly say that I accomplished everything I needed to today. I finished my manuscript edits for a meeting tomorrow and even set up all of my interviews for the new fall lab assistant. This week will be a busy one... trying to get my experiments ready for their next stage (the Roundup stage) and still working on that seed collection. I now have roughly 8 species I am confident I have 50,000 seeds of. Processing them has proved to be a lot of work and I am very lucky to have all of this help into the fall. 

Those of you who use R know.. that program is brutal. Coding might be the worst thing in the world. I spent most of today fiddling around with R trying to try some different stats for my paper. I forgot how close to a nervous breakdown you get when you use that program. I am trying to sort through my seeds now and I am not sure I am getting anywhere. I have SO many bags and  no idea where to start... I will leave that task for another time! At least I have Blake Shelton singing sweetly to me to get through the day!

Trying to get some good photos for the KHS calendar this year

Such a ham

Delicious thai sweet and spicy sauce I made...actually turned out!

Mapping out my plots in Wire Fence field 

Lids for my cylinders all ready to go. Need to store them for about 3 more months though!

A peek at what seed processing involves... breaking
each of these pods open to take out the seeds

and these pods too...

And picking every little seed off of these!

Almost 1/4 of the way there

I can't believe how fast time goes by. At this time last year I was just finishing up working for Burt's Greenhouses and starting a two week field work contract - looking forward to beginning my PhD. I didn't know what to expect when I started and it's been a journey thus far to say the least.

When I started my PhD, it took five months to come up with a solid project. Lots of literature reviews, meetings with my Supervisor and late nights lying in bed dreaming up ideas. Once the project was established, the next 2.5 months were spent changing it, tweaking it, adding stuff, removing stuff and thinking of anything that could possibly go wrong. As my Supervisor always says "If it can go wrong... It WILL go wrong".

Beautiful view of the Boston Wildlands property at the Queen's
University Biological Station. We ran into Mr. Boston back in July
who donated all of this land to QUBS..such a nice man!

Towards the end of month 7 I slowly began my field work. I was lucky enough to get a lot of help over the course of the summer. In May, as I am sure you remember from previous blogs, I spent the majority of the month with 3 field assistants installing cylinders into my two bigger field experiments. I spent June collecting seeds and plant samples for several projects (including an Honours thesis project) and I spent July doing a mess of things, including lots of seed collection, the same Honours thesis project + another new Honours thesis project and collecting seeds for a new "side project". August has been largely the same. Busy, busy, busy. I now have millions (literally) of seeds, many which require processing of some sort. I will lose two of my field assistants at the end of next week, but lucky as I am I get to hire a new one for September and also was VERY lucky to get a work study position. Over 100 hours of help throughout the school year. And I will need it. This September will be challenging - balancing TA duties with my neverending fieldwork and of course... that looming comprehensive exam... I shudder every time someone uses that word.

I guess I should enjoy these last two weeks of summer before the students come back. Here's to being productive and working hard... but as always playing hard is important too!

PS: Check out my most recent blog with Gradifying right here http://www.queensu.ca/connect/grad/2013/08/05/on-fostering-the-most-important-relationship-in-your-graduate-school-career/

And Atif's here http://www.queensu.ca/connect/grad/2013/08/12/welcome-to-graduate-school/

I was the ultimate seed collector today!

Hound's tongue seeds are very sticky - I am glad
I have field assistants to pick these off for me!

This picture doesn't even do it justice. There must be 300
bags of seeds in this side lab...at least!

Earlier this week. Needless to say... we got soaked. 

A photo from some other work I did this summer. Taking
photos with an agricultural cam of some plots I set up.

The poster I presented at the QUBS open house... another thing I have
done this field season!

This is unrelated... but I also picked 8 L of strawberries and made all
of this tasty jam. If anyone wants some, I'd be more than happy to share!