Adventures at Tudor Farm

Last week, I went to Tudor Farms in Cambridge, Maryland. It's a large estate on the Eastern Shore, whose owner has granted SERC permission to perform research on the effect of invading salt marshes into pine forests.The Phragmites dominated salt marsh is invading the loblolly pine forest, killing off the pine trees with both the rising water and the higher salinity of the water. It's fascinating to see occur!

When we first walked into the estate to check in, we walked into a large fancy barn filled with duck figurines (apparently called blinds for hunting, as a friend later corrected.) Then once we had a walkie talkie from the land managers, we were ready to head out to the plots to put bands on the trees.

On the trees in each plot, we put a band on each marked tree to measure its growth over time. A marked tree had to be at least 10 cm in circumference. First we had to shave the tree (there's a fancy word for shaving a tree, but I can't remember it). That's me shaving the tree on the left. Next we had to adjust the metal band for each unique tree. Finally we took an initial measurement of the band. The band expands with the tree's growth, so it does not restrict or harm the tree as it grows.

To the left is the majority of the group of us who went out to Tudor Farms on a quaint little bridge! The whole estate is quite impressive and it's amazing to see preserved wildlife property. The whole property is for sale right now, so if you have $30 million and want a hunting property with lots of wetlands, here's the property for you! I really hope who ever buys it keeps the wetlands, and does not destroy them.

Oodles of Food

So I've been not the best at keeping this blog updated. Apologies for such. I'm going to make up for it by making this post all about food. Since people have told me they love reading about all the different foods I cook. In fact apparently some people only follow this blog for the food, so here we go!

At the beginning of last week I made a chicken, rice, and vegetable bake. It was a repeat of one that I made at the end of last summer. I made it firstly because it turned out so well last time, and secondly because it's a big dish it leaves me with several meals worth of food. Plus it's super easy to throw some rice, vegetables, and chicken in the oven for over an hour while I go do something else. The oven dings, and dinner is ready to be served. Easy and delicious! You can see the recipe for the chicken, vegetable, rice bake on the post from last summer by clicking here.

The other night, my roommate Shelby and I made a joint dinner. I made the sweet potato fries and she did the turkey bacon and eggs. It was sort of like breakfast for dinner - good life choices because eggs and sweet potatoes are delicious! It almost looks like a smiley face of eggs and turkey bacon in the frying pan!

A few days ago, I went into Annapolis with my friend Hope. We are both returning interns from last summer and we both love Phragmites! As a way to relax for the evening, we got Thai at Lemon Grass - a scrumptious Thai fusion place in a cute little neighborhood of Annapolis. We got two big plates of food expecting to bring home leftovers, but we were both more hungry than we thought and the food was amazing!

Layered Mint Chocolate Fudge

I'm back into baking now that I have a kitchen! Bryn Mawr does not have kitchens in the dorms because of fire hazards (the dorms have burn times of less than a minute.) I had to start off the summer on a good foot and was craving fudge. Homemade fudge is the best! I found this layered mint chocolate fudge, and was hooked. I talked about making it for a few days before I had the chance to got to the grocery store and get the condensed milk.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
- 2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
- 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 6 ounces of white chocolate chips
- 1 tablespoon peppermint extract
(although honestly I put in about double the peppermint to really bring out the flavor)
Directions
1) In heavy saucepan, over low heat, melt chocolate chips with 1 cup sweetened condensed milk; add vanilla. Spread half the mixture into wax-paper-lined 8- or 9-inch square pan; chill 10 minutes or until firm. Hold remaining chocolate mixture at room temperature.
2) In heavy saucepan, over low heat, melt white confectioners coating with remaining sweetened condensed milk (mixture will be thick). Add peppermint extract and food coloring (optional).
3) Spread on chilled chocolate layer; chill 10 minutes longer or until firm.
4) Spread reserved chocolate mixture on mint layer. Chill 2 hours or until firm. Turn onto cutting board; peel off paper and cut into squares. Store covered in refrigerator.

I added extra chocolate chips to the top layer of chocolate fudge, which made it more solid than the other two layers, so it was like a chocolate coating on top of minty fudge on top of chocolate fudge!

Let's just say those little squares did not last very long amongst the interns! It's chocolate and peppermint in fudge! Which is basically another way to say scrumptious! They were amazing!

Muddy adventures at Deal Island

Last week, a few of us from the biogeochemistry lab at SERC went to Deal Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. We crossed Chesapeake Bay over the impressive Bay Bridge. Then went South. It was a good 2.5 hours one way! We left SERC at 5am! I'm used to that sort of wake up when I'm in crew season, but during the summer, I am definitely out of that cycle. So it was quite difficult to get up at 4:30am!

The Eastern shore marshes are very different than the GCREW marsh (the Global Change Research Wetland at SERC) which I'm used to. At GCREW we have nice boardwalks all the way out to the Phragmites chambers. That is not the case at Deal Island! We have to put planks on a set of stakes (in the picture on the left) over the stream. At high tide the water submerges the stakes, as the biogeochemistry PI, Pat learned at the end of the day. Pat fell in while retrieving the planks. If we left the planks on the stakes, they would be washed away with the tide, so we have to take them back with us. 

Once we get into the marsh, it's squishy the whole way! It was my first time out in a really squishy marsh. I sank past my knees several times before lunch. Thankfully, I could get myself out each time. After lunch, as the tide began to rise, I sank quite a few more times as we raced to install the methane flux collars and boardwalks before the tide came up. I had lots of muddy fun being in a real marsh!
We finished up the day with another 2.5 hour drive back, interrupted with a stop at Wawa to get gas and milkshakes. We all walked into the shop in mud covered field gear. I love sweet endings to muddy fun field days!

A frog, a view, and Phragmites

SERC is 2,650 acres of nature! It's wonderful to explore. Even if one goes on the same trail, it's never the same. There's always something new, something I missed before, something amazing. Take for example, this frog to the left. It was hiding under a few leaves on a bush. Isn't it lovely? The top left picture is the view from the top of the hill behind the ruins at sunrise one morning when I went for a run. The one on the right is the view off of the bridge on the Java trail. And those are just glimpses of the nature that I live surrounded when I am at SERC.

The Thursday before I got here, there was a viscious hail storm followed by a windstorm at SERC. According to Gary, the hail put a few holes in the plastic on the chambers, but the wind later that evening/night did the real damage, whipping into the holes, ripping them open. Almost all of the panels on the Phragmites chambers had to be redone. That's what I spent my first day back doing, after orientation, re-orientation that is. 

The Phragmites chambers are doing well for the beginning of the growing season. The Phragmites is already taller than I expected. And all of the stems are left from last year. It's part of who Phragmites is, it's a huge litter producer, which plays a key role in preventing other species from growing near it. The invasive, non-native lineage in particular has several traits that make it a "super-weed" one of it's current nicknames. You can see in this picture on the left that Phragmites dominates much of the area where it in invades. When these chambers were first established in 2010 they were built on the invading edge of Phragmites, half of the chamber were Phragmites and half was native vegetation. Now in many of the chambers, the Phragmites has pushed to the edge of the chambers. It's an amazing plant to study at an amazing institution! I'm so happy to be back at SERC!

Back to SERC for the summer field season

After two flights, two trains, and a car ride back to the East Coast, I'm in Maryland. I'm back at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) for the summer, 12 weeks of fun field season! 

The first night I made a pasta primavera with Ben, a housemate in Green Village with me. We cooked the pasta, some onion, green pepper, carrots, and a tad of pasta sauce. We both liked lots of veggies - more veggies than sauce is definitely the way to go! I put some mozerella cheese on top of mine. I put it on right after putting it in a bowl, so it melted into a delicious gooey top!

A few of the other housemates grilled veggies and meat, so we had the outside grill already warm. After dinner, we made s'mores! On a grill! We grabbed utensils from the kitchen like forks, spatulas, and tongs on which to place the marshmallows. Even though the process was a bit unusual, they still turned out to be good marshmallows! A good dessert to end the day and to start a marsh filled field season! Marsh-mallows!

Portland Adventures Part 5: Columbia River Gorge

 Road trip with Emily and Jade to the Columbia River Gorge! So most of this post will be pictures! I took so many pictures! And yes that's another creeper shot from the back of the car as we drove towards the scenic gorge.

The first site we went to was Vista House at Crown Point. It was first built in 1917 as a place for weekend goers to "refresh themselves" on their way down the the Historic Columbia River Highway and the Columbia River Gorge.
Today it is a coffee shop, gift shop, and information stop with educational exhibits.
It's a lovely house with gorgeous views! 

Then we went to Latourell Falls! We had to go up a steep little trail to reach this opening. It was so beautiful to see through the canopy with the trees framing the waterfall.

We stopped at a few places in between before going to Multnomah Falls - the third largest waterfall in the nation! It comprises of two levels of waterfall - an upper fall that is 542ft and a lower fall that is 69 ft as seen by the pictures on the left and right.

Here's the view from the bridge just above the lower fall. It was mesmerizing to just stare out at the scenery. And here's the three of us on the bridge!

We went a bit up past the bridge to this overlook. Where we could look down a grassy ravine onto where the waterfall came crashing down. There was this sign about falling rocks too! A bus sized boulder came down once! That must have caused a huge splash!

After going though the Columbia Gorge, we went to an ice cream place that Jade's family goes to every time they bike around the gorge. We stood in that line for an hour at least. But when I got my raspberry flavor burst ice cream, it was so worth it. The ice cream I'm holding is a small! Someone before me in line got a large it was so ridiculous, it comes with its own cup because it's so prone to falling over!

That ice cream was my last adventure in Portland, I was dropped off at the airport on the way back. I took that teeny tiny plane to SanFran to connect to Philly where I took an Amtrak to New Carrollton where I was picked up to go to SERC (the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland for those new to this blog or who haven't heard me rave about it.) I'm currently at SERC and will continue blogging about my SERC adventures as I did last summer! Stay tuned!