Raspberry Mouths

Yesterday my nephew and I went out to Randy Warren's farm to pick raspberries. The season is ending in a mere days on his farm and we didn't want to miss it. My nephew is a very good berry picker. After I showed him what a ripe berry looked like, he seemed to have ripe berry radar and wouldn't leave an area until he had picked every last berry. At first, he wanted to pick the whole pint of berries, so I let him. It was sunny and hot out there, so he'd take a break under a nearby shade tree and bring his water with him to cool down. Then, he'd come right back out and start picking again. He kept telling me how fun it was to pick berries and he'd get so excited when he found each ripe berry exclaiming, "Yummy! Yum!" When the pint was halfway full, he told me that I could pick the rest, he just wanted to chase butterflies now. :)

So after our raspberry picking adventure, we went down to Mendums Pond and went swimming. It is a beautiful place. I want to go back someday when I can swim out to the island. My nephew had his flippers, goggles, and snorkle in place, so while holding onto Auntie he could swim around to his hearts content, but we couldn't go past where I could reach, because we didn't have his lifevest with us. After swimming we ate lunch and our faces were all red from raspberry juice. My nephew even put raspberries in his baloney and cheese sandwich and loved it. We had a wonderful time!

I encourage everyone to find a nearby farm that does "You pick" and bring a kid along for the fun. My nephew took the picture on this blog and he's only three!

Flash Back!

I finally developed some photos from my camping trip to Mt. Washington and it remined me of the beauty of the place. The first day, we got hit by a crazy hail storm, but that didn't stop us from hiking to Ripley Falls, which was overflowing from all the days rain. We also saw a female moose on the side of the road driving to the falls trailhead.

The next day, we got up early to hike the Mountain. It was an awesome hike. We hiked up the Amanoosuc trail to the Lake in the Clouds. We passed waterfalls, swimming holes, and a gorge along the way. Once we reached the alpine zone, we waited for about an hour debating whether we should summit or not due to the chance of thunderstorms and hail predicted for the afternoon. Just as we decided to keep climbing up the boulder and scree path, the fog rolled in very thickly. It was hard to see the next rock cairn. It was really exciting. We never did summit though, we decided to take the "safe" route and cross below the summit to the other side of the mountain where we met up with the Jewell trail to hike back down through the amazing alpine region - very hard on the knees, but an adventure all the same. The fog burned off and it turned into a beautiful day so I took some pictures of the mountain and the trail we had hiked. By the time we got back to the car, I felt like a hard core hiker. On the way back to the campground we saw a moose and her calf on the side of the road. A perfect end to a wonderful day.

One of my favorite places

This morning in class, we all wrote poems about our favorite places. When asked if we wanted to share our poems, I felt nervous and very reluctant. I started to understand how a student might feel about reading their poem in front of others. A poem is so personal that you are sharing a part of yourself with everyone who hears it. I didn't end up reading mine in front of my classmates, but I feel comfortable sharing it in a written form. So here is my poem. (Heather, do you recognize the place?)

Renewal

Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat.

Each foot connects with earth for a

moment before pulling away again.

In through the nose.

Out through the mouth.

Mind, body, and spirit are refreshed

with each life giving breath. All negative

energy is forced out through exhalation.

Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat.

Right on schedule. The cows look

up from their breakfast. We silently

greet each other.

In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.

The dilapidated barn stands still as
I move forward.

Splash. Splash. Splash.
Splash. Splash.

A wave of frogs leap into the safety
of the shallow water.

Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat.
Pat. Pat. Pat.

I feel freedom and release as the
earth slopes downward.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

My feet no longer touch the earth.
Faster. Almost there. Just around
the next curve.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.

I've come full circle but am not the
same as when I began.

There was quite a bit of excitement after lunch. The claxton bells at the UNH campus started to sound and then a loud voice told everyone that there was a tornado warning, meaning one was SIGHTED in the area, and that everyone needs to get inside immediately. I walked outside of the library to get to the basement of one of the lecture halls. While outside, I looked left and saw the darkest cloud I've ever seen in my life. It scared me and my heart started to beat really fast. I hurried down into the basement and sat in the hallway away from all the windows. About half of my class was down there with me. We were supposed to be peer reviewing each others pedagogy papers, but it was hard to focus with the crazy weather going on outside. After about an hour, the claxton bells rang again and announced that the warning was over.

Wearing Waders

So I got to wear my new muck boots today as our last vegetation site is a puddle after heavy rains. I like this site because it was covered in moss, all types of ferns, grasses (which is unique to this site), and a huge blueberry bush that had a few ripe berries on it. Yum! If I hadn't of dosed myself in bugspray to keep the ticks away, I would have eaten those berries.

The sensitive fern was beautiful with raindrops beaded up on the fronds (see picture).

We finished our surveying in the field today, which means we will be inside on computers for much of the time remaining - yuck, I'd rather be outside. But, alas, the data must be analyzed so we can see if there are any differences or similarities between our sites. So far it has been quite hard to make charts with the data. I'm being introduced to Macs and Excel 2008 all at the same time and I feel like I know nothing again. Why do they have to change systems when everybody already knows how to use the old one! I was very tired at the end of the day. It took all my energy to figure out the computers.

Another day in the woods!

The mosquitos were horrid after the round of thunderstorms that travelled through New Hampshire this past weekend left puddles all over the forest floor, but no matter, we were out there surveying vegetation anyways. The place we went to today was beautiful. You can see for yourself from the photos. I put a few of the photos I took today on the other vegetation post. Ian found a metallic looking dragonfly hanging out on a hemlock sapling. I assume his wings were too wet to fly around, so he was taking cover until they could dry. I've included a picture, but it is not of the highest quality. We also heard a loud "thud" in the forest today. It most likely was a deer as we found scat nearby, but I can't help hoping that it was a moose as one was seen just days before on the farm (we were in the woods abutting the farm), or it could have been a chipmunk masquerading as an unidentified running brown animal - at least this time it wasn't running at us!

In other news, there is a tomato turning red on my monster of a tomato plant! It must be the all the rain. I was very excited to see the color change this weekend.

Getting our hands dirty!

This past week, my field study group started our work in the forest. To get to our study site, we park next to a field of wildflowers - black eyed susans, other asters, and Queen anne's lace. Then we walk 20 minutes on a winding dirt road passing all manner of animal tracks and scat along the way. I've seen moose prints, coyote scat, deer and turkey tracks, turkey feathers, wood frogs, and spring peepers, and lots of acrobatic chipmunks. We are studying vegetation along the border of Warren Farm and the Barrington Headwaters in NH. Half of the study site is made up of a recently logged forest and the other half is made up of a long ago logged forest. The difference in vegetation in these areas is evident immediately. Medium aged hemlocks and older pines dominate on the Warren land, while hardwoods, and softwoods are found in a diverse mix on the Barrington Headwaters side of the boundary line. Huge boulders are scattered all over the site, evidence of the distant past glacial activity.

Our group managed to collect data from 5 of the 9 plots we are studing, so only 4 more to go. I have found 4 ticks imbedded in me thus far, so I will start wearing bug spray as of today.

Our first vegetation plot!

My research group has a name! We are the Border Jumpers courtesy of Ian. That is a fitting name as we are studying vegetation on a boundary line of a farm and comparing the vegetation on either side of the boundary line. All day long we are crossing the border bewteen two properties. Today, we started our vegetation survey. I was happy that my group was willing to do the first plot together so that we could all experience each part of the data collection. We learned that it is really hard to tell a northern red oak from a black oak. We are still undecided as to what kind of oak is in our first plot. The rest of the data collection when pretty smoothly and I think we will be pros in no time at all.

The place we are at is unique and interesting. There is a moss covered wetland, a little bit swampy looking, but very green that is adjacent to our plots. The forest on the farm side of the boundary line looks like it has been logged a couple of times at least. The forest is almost a monoculture of eastern hemlock trees all around the same size. The larger trees and most of the hardwoods have been logged from this area and the small shade loving hemlocks have taken advantage of the wide open spaces and grown up and up incidentally shading out any hardwood saplings. It is on it's way to being a pure hemlock forest.
On the forest floor there are huge granite boulders all over the place, evidence of glacial movement through this area. There is also a recent skidder trail on which the logs were taken off the property. It has many herbaceous plants growing along it so it isn't too recent, but the plants are still very small so they haven't been growing there for too long either. I was amused by 3 little chipmunks that came very close to us as we were working on measuring our third plot. They were diving over and under each other like little acrobats. They were also sprinting towards us only to turn sharply just as they were about to run into us. It was fun to experience.