When Marshes Attack! And the Introduction of Chocolate Chip Muffins!

Today was truly a totally full day in the life of a field ecologist!!
And I really enjoyed it!
Even though by the time we were done I had scratches, bruises, a sunburn, and mud all over me. The experience I had today was great!

We went out to Korn Island today to install some plant collars. These collars are several inch high framed squares made of fancy scientific-grade aluminium. It took a while to find the right spot for all of the samples. We needed three spots for each group: an all native group, a group on the invasion edge of the invading Phragmites into the native population, and an established Phragmites patch. There's a joke in our lab that the more educated one is the more difficult they make simple decisions. It definitely took Peter and Justin a while to find plots, but I think that's definitely because they took the decision making process very seriously and rightly so. Once, we found a good spot, it was time to establish the frames into place, and out came the power saw! We put the frame down in its place, then power sawed around the sides and corners of the frames. Next was the very scientific methods of jumping and hammering on the frame to push it into the ground. So that's one down, and eleven to go. The native patches were easy, the invading edge patches were alright too,but the ones in all Phragmites were quite difficult. The Phragmites were over 2.5 meters tall! And very dense! Imagine trying to put a metal frame over that! It was hard.

We all scratches on ourselves by the end of the night. I even fell into a mud pool.  The muskrats in the marshes like to eat the roots of the Phragmites, when the muskrats do that, they weaken the marsh, basically removing the structure of the marsh. Once, the structure is removed, the marsh begins to sink, resulting in pools of mud and marsh water. These holes are hard to see in such dense Phragmites. And today, I didn't see the hole. I stepped right in the middle of it. I sunk up to the top of my knee high boots. Marsh water started to come in. So I abandoned my boot. Luckily, Jim was there to rescue my boot. But I already had a wet and muddy sock and pant leg.

A lot of the house went out for diner tonight or had already left for the weekend by diner time. So I was in the kitchen by myself. I was hungry for meat and cooked vegetables. I made sausages with cooked green peppers and mushrooms. I had just bought mushrooms at the grocery store and they were lovely! I hadn't had mushrooms since I arrived at SERC and diner tonight made see realize how much I had missed mushrooms. And now what I'm really proud of . . .

I made chocolate chip muffins! 
Look at how yummy they look golden brown tops with lots of melted chocolate chips on the inside. The recipe said I should have made 6 muffins, but I think I added too much batter to each hole in the baking tin, and there was not enough to make a sixth one. So I made five rather large chocolate chip muffins! I was so excited when I took them out of the oven. I almost could not wait 2-3 minutes for them to cool, but I did and it was well worth the wait! It was a very important and delicious chocolate chip muffin to me!
And my housemates thought they were yummy too! Success!