watch out for those double dippers among us....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/dining/30curious.html
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
winter
its winter here, like everywhere else in the northern hemisphere. here that means some rain and clouds. sometimes that happens, but its still warm and sunny most of the time. although it gets chilly at night, and it did frost a couple times right after christmas. at the garden, some of the plants are covered up so they don't get frostbit. but i still see hummingbirds almost every day.
jeremiah visited after xmas. we went up to allen's boss's "cabin" in new mexico for a few days (cabin is not quite the right word...more like small luxury home in the woods). you can see some pictures when i bother to put them online. it was something of an adventure. we rented a minivan since there were 6 of us. the cabin is some distance (>10 miles) down a dirt road. this we knew. we also knew it had snowed an inch or so a couple days before we got there. we also knew there was a hill. we didn't anticipate that the snow would have stayed around quite so long, since the air temp was in the 40s during the days. and the hills were steeper than we anticipated. we got almost all the way up to the house on the first try. the last 1/10 mile we just couldn't do. the tires were just spinning. so we carried all our stuff and food to the house. jeez, do your lungs not like being at 6500 ft when you're not used to it! anyway, we go settled in, only to find that the pipes seemed to be frozen. (i concluded that the last person there did not properly flush them and close up the house, that's why they froze, but we don't know for sure--but the solid block of ice in the toilet tank is some kind of clue, i tell you!) we got the wood stove going, and the house heated up pretty quickly. from 45 to 75 in a few hours. nice. ok, so no water exactly, but it was warm and the power worked, so we were pretty stoked. and it was super nice up in them woods. the next day we went to a national monument nearby and then had some trouble driving back up the hill but we managed. other than that, nothing too significant. good food, good times, jenga marathon.
since then its been back to work. more field trips at the garden. and i've been helping interview people to be new school guides like me. and helping develop some new curriculum elements and a new "advanced science" course for the adult volunteers, on taxonomy. its pretty fun, and keeping me busy.
tomorrow we'll see steve freedberg, a blast from the past. he's in arizona with his desert ecology class from st. olaf college. i'm showing them around the garden and then we're going with tim to look for ants/other insects/whatever we can find. because, like i said at the start...its winter here. which means that things are relatively inactive. so, we might not find much. other than birds and jackrabbits and the feral cats at the garden.
and to close, a funny story for you about a field trip i did before xmas. it was a "flower and seed" tour, focusing on plant reproduction. it was a group of special needs students (down syndrome, etc.). so i had to figure out on the fly what they could handle, because i had no idea. we talked about different animals and what kind of flowers they like to pollinate, what things they eat that are fruits, how plants get traits from the mom plant and the dad plant... and i was proud of myself because i was sure they were getting something out of it and having a good time and i hadn't freaked out about not knowing i would have a special needs group... then one kid said, "how do mommies and daddies make babies?" and it was clear he was talking about human babies, not plant babies... OMG, what do you say to that?? but i kept my cool and just said, "well, we are just going to talk about how mommy and daddy plants make baby plants, ok?" and that seemed to satisfy him, he didn't ask again. WHEW.
jeremiah visited after xmas. we went up to allen's boss's "cabin" in new mexico for a few days (cabin is not quite the right word...more like small luxury home in the woods). you can see some pictures when i bother to put them online. it was something of an adventure. we rented a minivan since there were 6 of us. the cabin is some distance (>10 miles) down a dirt road. this we knew. we also knew it had snowed an inch or so a couple days before we got there. we also knew there was a hill. we didn't anticipate that the snow would have stayed around quite so long, since the air temp was in the 40s during the days. and the hills were steeper than we anticipated. we got almost all the way up to the house on the first try. the last 1/10 mile we just couldn't do. the tires were just spinning. so we carried all our stuff and food to the house. jeez, do your lungs not like being at 6500 ft when you're not used to it! anyway, we go settled in, only to find that the pipes seemed to be frozen. (i concluded that the last person there did not properly flush them and close up the house, that's why they froze, but we don't know for sure--but the solid block of ice in the toilet tank is some kind of clue, i tell you!) we got the wood stove going, and the house heated up pretty quickly. from 45 to 75 in a few hours. nice. ok, so no water exactly, but it was warm and the power worked, so we were pretty stoked. and it was super nice up in them woods. the next day we went to a national monument nearby and then had some trouble driving back up the hill but we managed. other than that, nothing too significant. good food, good times, jenga marathon.
since then its been back to work. more field trips at the garden. and i've been helping interview people to be new school guides like me. and helping develop some new curriculum elements and a new "advanced science" course for the adult volunteers, on taxonomy. its pretty fun, and keeping me busy.
tomorrow we'll see steve freedberg, a blast from the past. he's in arizona with his desert ecology class from st. olaf college. i'm showing them around the garden and then we're going with tim to look for ants/other insects/whatever we can find. because, like i said at the start...its winter here. which means that things are relatively inactive. so, we might not find much. other than birds and jackrabbits and the feral cats at the garden.
and to close, a funny story for you about a field trip i did before xmas. it was a "flower and seed" tour, focusing on plant reproduction. it was a group of special needs students (down syndrome, etc.). so i had to figure out on the fly what they could handle, because i had no idea. we talked about different animals and what kind of flowers they like to pollinate, what things they eat that are fruits, how plants get traits from the mom plant and the dad plant... and i was proud of myself because i was sure they were getting something out of it and having a good time and i hadn't freaked out about not knowing i would have a special needs group... then one kid said, "how do mommies and daddies make babies?" and it was clear he was talking about human babies, not plant babies... OMG, what do you say to that?? but i kept my cool and just said, "well, we are just going to talk about how mommy and daddy plants make baby plants, ok?" and that seemed to satisfy him, he didn't ask again. WHEW.
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