Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts

Monday, 26 August 2013

The Adventures of the Brave Little Tomato Sauce Bottle

What would life be without a bit of adventure?

Sunrise and full moon over the Southern Alps.
With some luck, and the intensive root-washing efforts of K and F, I was able to finish my experimental harvest in time to have a weekend free to explore! Together with my new favorite travel companion -- a genuine tomato-shaped NZ tomato sauce bottle, a gift from Jamie - I took off South and West to explore parts of the South Island both new and familiar.

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!

Thursday, 22 November 2012

On Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving, United States-ers!

Once again, I've managed to be out of the country for my favorite holiday. (Well, favorite outside of the day after Easter, which I celebrate with my credit card and circuit through all the major grocery stores within 5 miles.)

Last year, I ate amazing smoked turkey with friends, collaborators, and future founders of "The Ukranian Journal of Looking at Animals" (future home of many a paltry thesis chapter?) in Montreal and was grateful for a warm dinner, laughter, and snow on the ground.

This year, I had an even stronger prompt to remember all there is to be thankful for. Because my experiment failed.

That's right: Those cute Douglas-fir seedlings, looking all fat and happy in their posh greenhouse, had next to no ectomycorrhizal fungi on them at all.

Individually tagged, pulled out of the PVC
pipe, and ready for washing!

We're not sure why the experiment failed.