Catching Up

Ahhhhhhh--breathing a sigh of relief after a marathon semester. Judging by the Simpler Times in the yard hole (and the wayward one in with the lettuces) this morning, I think we did the celebration some justice.

That aside, I finally have some time to sit down and pen a post. The lack of writing certainly hasn't been for lack of things to write about--just non-stop.

I made my first trip to western VA last weekend--it wasn't exactly vacation, but I could see it being a nice place to be for vacation. The purpose of the trip was to electroshock some darters and small silver jobs (Notropis spp., but SSJ's will do, unless you're good at counting pharyngeal teeth after a half-dozen beers). We surveyed a bunch of different rivers and I was amazed by the diversity of freshwater fishes in the Southern Appalachians (perhaps the most diverse native freshwater fish fauna in North America). Highlights included the margined madtom (Noturus insignis), the fantail darter (Etheostoma flabellare), and everyone's favorite: the candy darter, (Etheostoma osburni), with colors to rival those of most reef fishes. Another cool find (besides a lot of rural road-kill, including a sizable snapping turtle) was a hellbender. I had no idea what this was before we caught one, but according to the Hellbender Homepage: "Hellbenders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) are extremely large, completely aquatic salamanders native to the eastern United States. The largest hellbender ever recorded was nearly 21/2 ft. long." Ours was closer to 1 foot than 2.5, but it was still a really impressive salamander...kind of prehistoric looking.

While we were out in that part of the world, we stayed at the UVA Mountain Lake Biological Station, which is my favorite kind of field outpost--a beautiful and peaceful location, with a few dedicated souls studying all sorts of ecology. I was pleased to strike up a conversation with a nice dude studying dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) and I learned a ton from our 15-minute chat.

There was another highlight to the trip (one I will, no doubt, be ridiculed for mentioning): the proximity to the resort where Dirty Dancing was filmed! How many times did I say "Nobody puts Baby in a corner..." and "Uh, I carried a watermelon?..." while I was there??? Too many to count, but I loved that "Kellerman's" was a stones throw away! Haha!


Beyond excursions, we've been watching all the trees flower and leaf out and are continually amazed by how much crap falls from the local oaks! Apparently, they spew leaves in the fall--lots of leaves--and catkins in the spring--lots of catkins. This makes for just a wee bit of pollinated mayhem in the yard! Thankfully, we seem to get these amazing thunderstorms every few days, which knock most of the evil yellow stuff out of the air--achoooo--good for the allergy sufferers, not so great for the canine, who has developed a major aversion to such meteorological events! At last try, we couldn't even get a rawhide treat to calm her nerves. Poor girl.


On the homefront, a day of freedom from the books, meant some major devotion to the garden. Our seedlings had long outgrown their starter flats, so I had to transplant everything into larger pots for the final few weeks before they get put into the ground--damn, we over-planted! I think fitting 40+ tomato plants (of 6 varieties), 44+ pepper plants (of 8 varieties) plus all the other stuff we have into the 72 sq. ft of garden we have set aside is going to be a challenge! Can you say annex?


We were able to harvest the first of the lettuces and arugula today! The gardener-in-chief braved a torrential downpour to put some food on our table--carefully selecting the best looking leafy green things for our dinner salad. It was delicious! Through the miracles of photosynthesis, we should be filling our salad bowl with more than just leafy greens in a few months...the peas are looking good enough that it could be just a few weeks before we steal some of those from the vines!