Goodbye Cedar Creek Summer

Friday was my last day working at Cedar Creek. I loved my internship and the variety of jobs it encompassed.
The clouds were so picture perfect one morning:


and the mist on the purple grass seed heads was magical looking:


It got to be very hot that day! I was waiting for measurement readings and snapped this random, sweaty picture:


This is taken in Crookston in one of the prairie plots. I loved the look of the isolated patch of "squirrel tail" grass seeding:


My favorite prairie flower:

Me being a goober the first morning we loaded up and headed out to survey prairies in Crookston:

gotta love the high tech equipment, eh?

-in case you're wondering, the giant box was used to weigh harvest samples on a really small scale :)

Eating my words

I have heard the phrase "You pick your battles"
but always thought it was a bit of a cop-out excuse....
until:
this past week.

I admit I was wrong,
so very, very, very wrong!

I had the "pleasure" of working up in Crookston with one of the most difficult personalities I have EVER encountered! I have been working with this person all summer so I was aware of her passive-aggressive personality and thought I was mentally prepared to handle it.

hahaha

There are no words to describe how horrible it got. I have never in my life encountered someone who was so sure they were right, that they argued with me that a printed map must be wrong....
Somone that thought they were god's gift to plant species identification and if she didn't know a plant then there was no way I was correctly identifying it. It didn't matter that I spent many summers growing up changing sprinkler lines in fields of alfalfa, and many hot summer days spent hoeing knap weed out of fields.....
Said individual questioned and argued every procedure, rule, and guideline possible. She also loved to ask innocent-sounding questions (that she full well knew the answers to) just so she could argue your answer.

I quickly learned to pick my battles and became rather quiet as the week progressed. I argued only when it involved procedure and protocol, or something that could be quickly proven with a resource book.

A tremendous learning experience, in many ways.
And I officially eat my words: you do, occasionally, have to pick your battles!

Where in the world is....

Crookston, MN?
I have accepted an opportunity to collect data at another research site in Crookston, MN starting this coming Friday, Aug. 14th. I googled Crookston and found out it is 5 1/2 hours away from where I am currently working. Yikes! Road trip anyone?
There is one other intern going with me, but it will be just us. The project manager is anticipating that it will take us around 40 hours to collect all the neccessary data. We plan to work through the weekend and into the next week so hopefully things will go well! We might have to travel down to Morris, MN for some training, which is kind of on the way. I am really excited for this opportunity! This site is one of the prairie biofuel research sites. I truly believe this is the wave of the future and definately a much better alternative than corn ethanol. Curious? Here is a link describing the basics:
http://www.prairiebiofuel.com/

Working through the weekend means I won't be coming home for awhile.... but Skott has been doing a wonderful job keeping up with the house, watering plants, and working on projects. I am so grateful for all that he is doing. He is currently finishing up the painting on our stairs. They look amazing!

I plan on working at Cedar Creek until Aug. 28th and then back to school Sept. 2nd.

Gooseberry Falls Field Trip

We went on an intern field trip to visit another research facility in Cloquet, MN studying the effects of global warming on boreal and temperate forests. Afterwards we went to Gooseberry Falls State Park and hiked around for a couple hours.
For those of you who have never been to MN/WI, there aren't really "mountains" -just gently rolling "hills" so these falls are a big deal :)
This is one of the paths we hiked on to get to the falls. I just love all the neat roots that are exposed.

The falls:



It was a gorgeous day. I wish I would have had more than my cell phone camera for pictures.