Friday 21 December 2012

"Well before I'm northward bound..."*

As I begin to pack up my five-and-a-half week stay in New Zealand, I thought it might be nice to document some of the fun the last week has brought my way. I was drawn to science because of its variability: It's rare that I spend more than a few days -- much less a few weeks -- doing the same thing. Which means that I'm never stuck on a dull task for very long, and that I occasionally get weeks like this one, which remind me how lucky I am that I get to play for a living and how much joy I get from my job!

Having finished up his seedling harvest, I spent Monday with J. at the Canterbury Museum, where I got to dust off my dSLR (which got hauled down here, telephoto lens and all, only to sit on the shelf while my point-and-shoot saw most of the action) to photograph some of the bones that he was measuring. Many of the photos will hopefully see some use as reference photos, since we posed them to highlight morphological differences between species. 
Bird-brained?
I absolutely love going behind-the-scenes at museums, and it was so cool to get a glimpse of the avian collection -- especially some enormous Moa bones!

And if that weren't enough, I also got treated to a couple evening trips to the seaside, once with K. to enjoy a bottle of our favourite wine, and once for a nice long run, as the shadows slowly stretched out in the lingering summer dusk. It's going to be hard to adjust to the short days of the Northern Hemisphere winter next week.
Sumner: the perfect spot for a beach run!
I was amazed a gull had flown into my shot so perfectly.
Then I realized I was near their nesting site, and really it
was gathering with its companions to mob me!
It was a banner evening for finding sand dollars at Sumner!
Meanwhile, the replanted seedlings have been holding their own in the greenhouse. I check in on them every couple of days, make sure they're well-watered, and take a nervous tally of the ones that are starting to droop after all the abuses to their root systems.
Dreaming of a (Perlite) White Christmas.
I got to spend a pleasant few hours of quality time with them when I added a centimeter or so of perlite to the top of each pot. The perlite makes it much easier to water the trees without splashing (which could cross-contaminate the soils in each pot) and reflects some of the incoming light to keep the soils cool and moist just a bit longer over the holiday season. 

And, with my empirical work done for this stay in the Southern Hemisphere, I got a chance to turn back to math, and spent a solid few days buried in some of the most pleasant calculus I've done in some time. Short of doing math on a chalkboard, few things beat burying one's head in a bit of algebra for an afternoon. (OK, maybe my judgment is a little off because of my love of partial derivative signs.)


 Between that, various holiday celebrations, a weekend trip to the beach that even involved a quick dip in the South Pacific, and the chance to turn yet another one of L.'s carefully-crafted Word documents red and green with comments and revisions, it's been a truly lovely week.

Last Saturday, I discovered that a bus runs from J.'s house out
to New Brighton. The water there is a balmy 60*F, so I even
got a swim in! Next time, I'll have to wear a more bodysurf-
friendly swimsuit!
Happy Holidays, and all the best in work and play for the New Year, from Aotearoa!


*For those of you interested in such poetical things, the title of this post comes from the lyrics of "Northward Bound" by Bearfoot (formerly Bearfoot Bluegrass), which M., B., E., and the rest of the UAS REU students fell in love with during our Juneau summer.

No comments:

Post a Comment