A Little of Everything

I woke up this morning at 7:30 and started watering all the thirsty plants at the vineyard. It took me two hours to get through everything from the Dahlia pots to the mini-orchard. The vegetable garden was particularly problematic as it is very far from the house and the hoses seemed to loose pressure over such a distance. I was a bit confused about this until this afternoon when Hillary and Doug mentioned that hard water buildup sometimes clogs the screens and obstructs hose flow.

My breakfast was 4 tacos at Jack in the Box on the way to school :-(

I decided to be cheap because I just filled up the truck with gas and it cost $61. Hopefully that will last a while. Luckily it is a manual transmission and I drive strategically...

I started working on campus at 11 Am. I moved all the Cocos pots from Greenhouse 5 to Greenhouse 1. Tim was nice enough to help. Next I took at two soil samples from each of the test pots. I took samples from the opposite sides of the plant and in line with, but not in front of or behind the dripper that supplies water/nutrients.

Tim and his minions brainstormed and we managed to find a better (hopefully) technique for keeping sand in the pots. 

1) Take a maize pot, cover bottom with enough perlite that the drainage holes are obscured

2) Insert the first pot into another, such that the drainage holes are staggered

3) Fill with sand mix

4) Water

5) Profit? 

I took all the samples to the Dirzo lab and measured out 18 KCl extracts and set that up. I also have 9 samples in the drying oven (one from each pot)

I cleaned enough erlenmeyer flasks to run the P resin bags tomorrow. Unfortunately they have to shake for 17 hours, so I think I'll start them in the evening? 

Mrs. Crissy is flying in on Sunday though, and I'm picking her up at the airport, so I have to make sure not to schedule any conflicts there...

Sometimes the work goes slower than I would like, but most of the time it is just me, so I have to get used to it I guess. If I stuck to the hours allotted by FWS though there'd be no way anything would get finished.

Tonight Amy, Bill, Jamie, Zuzie and I are having a Palmyra reunion dinner at the winery, that should be fun! Since I haven't gotten groceries and I'm too tired/not really interested in cooking we're all just going to go to the store on the way up there.

Unfortunately Bill is leaving for Africa on Friday, so I'll have less help with the winery. On the positive side, I'll steal his room when he leaves. I moved in first and made the poor decision not to scope out the rooms. so I took the tiny room with the small bed. :-/