Recent events

Man, I've been neglecting this blog something fierce. And I don't have an excuse at this point. I will finish spring break eventually, only a few days left now, but stuff's been going on since obviously.

Just down to Geier's class at this point, a bit more reading for him, as well as a beastly 15pg paper, but then it's just the 3 exams. We have a weekend trip to St. Davids and Swansea this weekend, which should be fun. We'll eat well if nothing else.

It's election time here next Thursday, and it's actually pretty exciting, even for a foreigner. John and I have been watching the debates with my flatmates. For the first one (apparently this is the first time they've done televised debates?) we had up to 14 people in the flat watching. Everyone supported different parties, so it was pretty funny watching them all argue (in a friendly way). I guess if I were to vote, I'd go for the LibDems, but I don't know how likely it is they'll win. The two main parties, Labour and Conservative, seem pretty entrenched. Watched one last night with considerably fewer people, while playing with TC's dictionary.

Been hanging out with my flatmates a bit more since the workload has slacked off. Board games and uno, bad tv, just hanging out and talking/snacking. It's been nice, I'm really going to miss these guys.

Last week was the week of terrestrial ecology hell. Wednesday was an all day trip to Porthkerry Park (I was supposed to go on another one the day before, but the prof forgot to tell me where and when we were meeting). The park is near Barry and the airport, which had planes flying into it for the first time in almost a week. It was actually a trip for a different module, but my prof wanted me to tag along to make up for labs I missed at the beginning of the year. Luckily I had two nice guys, Richard and Matt, adopt me into their group for our tree surveying. We were assigned quercus robur (oak), and had some fun running around in the woods (despite my allergies). Lunch was in the open part of the park by the golf course and the beach and really nice. Richard shared his gummyworms with us. Second half of the day was supposed to be the same exercise but in a different section of the park. Only trouble was that that part of the park held a grand total of 3 oak trees, one of which was barely living. So we had to do a different method, but it was fine. I was up all that night writing a paper for that class about sanguisorba officinalis, which is essentially a weed that no one cares about. Luckily Tris managed to find a bit more info in his horticulture library than I could in ours and sent me some scanned sources.

Friday was an all day practical for that class (about 3 hours, but it was running all day), in which we got to sit down with the 23 species we have to memorize (both normal and Latin name), and what soil conditions they imply. Spent forever drawing them all and writing notes, but hopefully it'll pay off. As I was leaving the main, I realized I didn't have my wallet. I had a paper due to the Welsh dept that day so I had been to the library, and had class in the humanities building, so I had a lot of ground to cover. After panicking around to all the buildings, I eventually found it, someone turned it in intact at security in the main. Whew.

Sat was another early morning, and another all day trip, this time to Bryn Bach Park, Garwnant Forest Centre, and Caerphilly Mountain. Byrn Bach is kinda a gross place, it used to be a coal mine that they've tried to replant and make nice. We walked around the man made lake digging holes, taking pH readings and yelling out the Latin names of the plants we needed to know. Drove to Garwnant and had lunch. They had the coolest playground ever, lots of stuff strung up in the trees, nothing that would pass US safety standards these days (so naturally way better). We tromped around in the woods, discovering that the forest we were supposed to be viewing had been clear cut. Whoops. Then into the bush, where we were warned about holes and adders (luckily I didn't trip up to badly or encounter the latter). Dug some more holes etc. Went into a stand of spruce and my allergies flared up big time, did a few more tree measurements and did some wrap up back in the park part. We headed to the mountain, and drove up, only spent about 15min there looking at a few species we hadn't seen yet.

Sunday was more of the same, but instead of forests we explore sand dunes! Our first stop was Kenfig Nature Reserve. The dunes are huge and the beach is beautiful. The thing that most blew my mind here was that they are actually trying to get their dunes to erode! They're trying to maximize biodiversity, which means maximizing habitats, which means stopping searal development in the middle stages. The problem is the system got away from them and is in the latter stages, so basically a climax community, not particularly diverse. So for once in my life I was encouraged to climb all over the dunes and erode at will. Strange. They allow horses, pets, and move the path regularly to try to cause blowouts. I think it's esp. strange since they haven't had new sand input for 50 years or so (probably because of dredging around Bristol taking it out of the system). I'd be worried, esp. with the barrage project going forward, that they might lose them all if they aren't careful.

We dug some more holes, looked at a ton of different surveys and did some quadrat counting in a dune slack (very wet, esp. since it drizzled on us that day). Finally ate lunch and headed to Merthyr Mawr. A hugeeee dune. Let me tell you, dunes are NOT easy to climb. The class (the majority of which were hung over that day), puffed their way up to look at more plants, and had a lot more fun sliding down the slope. We did more wrap up and headed to Ogmore to walk up a hill to look at a beech and a box.

This week has been a lot slower, no major work due, just reading. I went to stay with Tristan on Wednesday in Guildford. It's a nice little town, lots of horses and trees (more pollen, ugh). I met his housemates, who were all really nice. It was nice to see Cathal (the guy who put us up in Ireland, more about him later) again. Wednesday we actually got moving before noon, and drove up to Merrist Wood, where Guildford College has a lot of its programs. I got to see arboriculture area, and the pinetum that he's been working on with his class, which is going to be really pretty. It was cool to see his work first hand. We took a long walk in the woods around campus, which was full of bluebells and nettles (luckily I didn't get stung though I was wearing sandals). We had lunch and watched How to Train Your Dragon, which was actually a really good movie. We went to dinner at a really nice Italian place, which was small and totally hidden, but we found it in the end. Thursday morning and the train back to Cardiff and class came way too early.

Well, that's a lot for one go, I feel sufficiently updated. Ireland next.