Halloween

Weeee! Jenise supplied us with wigs for halloween. I've already had 3 people ask me if I cut my hair! Bara is the girl you don't recognize, whe is Eliska's Czech student, come for the month to work with us.

Baby Hugo

Through the back channels, and with all sorts of sneakiness, I've got this new picture of Hugo. My darlin Dasa has been super busy and sick lately, so I haven't been able to talk with her, but got this pic from Eliska. Now, the scary thing is how much this child looks like Jakub, his papa. Cute though, in spite of it all! ;)

Salt Marsh field trip

For our last field trip of the year, the wetlands class went to China Camp state park to get a look at a relatively pristine California saltmarsh. This is by far the funniest trip of the bunch, with side splitting giggles to be had by all. We even upped it a notch this year by arriving late and having an incoming tide to push things along. (We took a scenic tour of Vacaville in an attempt to pick up a student. Got the impression that there were 3 park and rides in the silly town, turns out we just circled one of them for 20 minutes!)

We started the day out climbing to the top of a hill so that we could get some perspective on what we were trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, the path was under reconstruction so we had to sneak around back and make our way through the bush. Never, with Eliska, will you miss out on wetland experience due to some silly rules! Weee!

Doesn't mean she won't fill your brain to bursting though
With all the gear needed, the best option as a TA, is to simply give it to the students to carry! ;)
The first obstacle of the day was to cross the tidal creek that you can see winding through the marsh in the first picture. Now, it doesn't look that wide now, but remember that it is about a meter deep, with a meter more of sticky sucking mud, and plants draping over the edge so you have no idea where the ground stops and the immanent fall begins. It took some of us a great deal of encouragement and assistance to cross... While others got their kicks by laughing at us! Ok, maybe we all laughed at ourselves too, I know I did. The most common plant here was pickleweed, or Salicornia/Sarcocornia (damn plant biologists constantly changing names ;) This plant has a really cool way of dealing with the high salt concentrations, by pumping it into the segments you can see in this pic, and shedding them when the concentration gets too high. Turns a pretty red too! This part of the bay has managed to stay free (for now) of the invasive Spartina that is plaguing the rest of the bay. Here, we have a nice, well behaved population of the native.
When walking on the pickleweed, you can almost forget how treacherous wetlands can be to your walking ability, but the Spartina can bring it all back. As Eliska talked about fascinating tidbits and explained the procedures of the days work, people were slowly sinking... sinking... but sooo proud that they made it out!Now I was such a giving and caring TA, (ha!) that I sacrificed my lovely boots to another so I had to stay on the relatively safe ground in the pickleweed. Look at the cool bug I found though! The students go to experience all sorts of wetland techniques that day, including sucking water out of the ground to measure sulfides, yum yum.

Stephanie, getting a little sassy with RicIf you look closely, you can see the ranger's hat. Yes, we got into trouble. The man tromped all the way through the marsh to yell at us, but Eliska sweet talked our way out
On our way out, the tide had come up fully, and crossing that silly creek became even more of an ordeal. This time, assistance was a little more necessary...

and sometimes, not enough!

That started it all. Two more got pretty wet, though not quite so spectacularly so, and not 5 minutes later, as they were walking ahead, 3 people fell into a smaller creek hidden by the pickleweed, simultaneously! Ric, of course, had just crossed it, claims he warned everyone, but...

It was a nice day though, and we all laughed so hard our cheeks ached and our stomach muscles protested. I love this class!

My heart is broken

Mitch got adopted this weekend. Something I was in no way wanting or prepared for. As impossible as it was, I really wanted to keep this dog. He was basically the dog I want for the life I want. Instead, I have no space for him and had to give him up. The hardest part is that I had no say in the matter. I only took him to the adoption event because I didn't know what to do with him while I was on the field trip. With all of my other dogs, I was able to give the final go ahead, but not with Mitch. I've never even met these people! I spent the weekend moping, feeling more like I had just lost a boyfriend than a silly dog. Sigh...

Fall color

I went to my grandmother's house this weekend. Turns out, half my family had the same idea. My aunt Karen came up from Napa, and Dave and Linda escaped from Fremont. Mini reunion I guess. I brought the Mitchmeister, with a little bit of trepidation, since Dave and Linda were bringing their little cuties, Tag and Chase. Seemingly not a problem, except the fact that Chase has little man syndrome, and Mitch could eat him in one little bite. In the end, Mitch hardly even noticed them, and man did that bug Chase!We went for a hike on Saturday, to see the aspens. It was a beautiful drive just to get there, and though we almost missed the aspens, there was still plenty of color to make us happy. Even without leaves, the trees were lovely.We took all the dogs along, Mitch actually behaved amazingly well. He went a little nose happy, smelling absolutely anything and everything, but did a good job staying with us and staying out of trouble. It may have helped that I was giving him treats every time he came when called, though by the end he didn't even want them.
Typical boy
This is my aunt Linda, looking cute as she rivals me in taking too many pictures. but, come on! it was pretty!

Karen tried to collect a bunch of leaves for her table at home, I thought she matched the color scheme pretty darn well!
Some of the trees around the aspens ended up looking like Christmas trees, all decorated with yellow bulbs.
The boys weren't quite so interested in running through the woods, but they were cute (even if they are officially 'little dogs'.When we got to the creek at the end of our little jaunt, I realized that I had been there before, loooong time ago when I was a whining little kid being drug along by my parents. Actually, I always loved romping through the forest, but it was that long ago. Interesting how that one little view brought everything back though. The dogs loved the open space. Whatever Mitch is mixed with, he seems to have inherited the Labrador love of water, jumping right into that freezing stream.
There was also some disturbing consumption of unmentionables by sneaky pups, but I don't want to think about that really, especially since I got some puppy kisses later that day. eeewww!
To top off the color, on the way home we stopped at Big Trees park. Not to see the giant redwoods, (which are spectacular if you have never experienced them) but to admire the dogwoods (the lesser known spectacle of the park). The whole drive down we could see them, catching little pockets of sunlight in the dark forest and lighting up like bursts of flame. It was stunning.
Mitch wanted desperately to chase the squirrels, but since it was a dog free park, he was stuck with me.
After hanging out with the fam, having typical Nelsen fiery discussions and too much wine, Grandma put us to work winterizing her yard. I didn't get it together enough to get a picture of everyone, but here are Dave, Grandma, and Linda in front of G-ma's own spectacular dogwood.

My most recent headache

I finally finished this year's map of the Cosumnes slough. It was much less of a headache than previous years because I had the help of two of my lovely students, Ric and Amber. But, still... there were plenty of inexplicable problems and I am very glad it's done.

He's back! and I need new pants

I have a new foster dog. Well not so new, I've got Mitch back, for a real foster this time. Remember, I had him a few months ago as a temporary foster to give his foster a break while her dog had surgery and the house got remodeled. The poor boy was adopted again this weekend, and returned, again. It is so strange that all 3 fosters have loved him to pieces, yet all three adopters have returned him. He's young, powerful, and pushes his limits, but that's like any lab. I think of him like a teenage boy: runs over everyone until he respects you, but once he does? He will do anything and everything for you. We are still working on him respecting me again, I need to get him tired really. Amazing how well they behave when they are tired!
So, unfortunately, things started off pretty badly today. We were on the way to school, me riding the bike, him running. He was great when I had him before, was pretty good this time, but... he saw a squirrel and I don't have a pinch collar for him yet so didn't have that strong control. So, he darted in front of me and I went down hard. I almost saved it, almost kept him back, almost stopped the fall, but no. So now I have a very bloody knee, and a purple hand. Fun fun. First time I have crashed with a dog since my 3rd foster, and that was almost 2 years ago!
So, my pants are ruined, bringing me to another point. I have to go, shudder, shopping. sigh... My favorite pants are only held up by a safety pin in the zipper. My second favorite (that I took to south america), I was folding after laundry this weekend and realized I could see through the ass. Another pair, on the Tahoe field trip I caught the leg on a log and ripped a whole panel out. Yesterday, I went to put my backup pair on and the zipper only came up one side of the teeth, kind of useless. And then today. In slightly over a week, I have gone through most of my collection, leaving the fancy ones, the skinny ones, and the really really ugly ones. Shopping it is, sigh...

Cosumnes field trip

We went back to Cosumnes this weekend, this time with the class in tow. On the way in we saw a whole bunch of pelicans, have I ever told you how much I love pelicans? We went for a little nature walk when we arrived, mostly just to wake up . Lots of super cool spiderwebs in the mist sort of thingBut, eventually, we got to work. Here's our lovely study siteIn the distance here, you can see Eliska and some of the students. Just so you know, it took a whole lot of effort to get that far. Just imagine yards and yards of loosely piled ropes about thigh high. You have to develop a funny little sideways throw your leg out and over sort of walk, it's rather exhausting.They first mapped the wetland with GPS (I of course bungled the explanation and had to scramble and figure it out). Then I get to put it all together to make a map that looks like this (this is the map from 2 years ago). It's kind of fun because the class has been doing this for 5 years now and you can see changes in vegetation and all sorts of cool stuff.For instance, last year there was so much water over the winter that many plants died during the extensive flooding and we saw lots of bare ground in the wetland (NOT normal). After that, we had them collecting biomass samples. It was nice watching other people do what I've spent the past year torturing myself with. I got to stand outside and shout helpful comments in ;)
There was all sorts of cheekiness and good humor
And tromping through the muck

One of the more common plants at Cosumnes is the water primrose (Ludwigia). The species we had here is a pretty nasty invasive, but admittedly quite pretty. Evil to walk through though!And as the students discovered, a pain in the butt to collect.
Afterward, the biggest challenge was getting the stupid boots off.
Got ya!


Oh, and I told you I'd introduce you to the rest of my students once I got pics, so here they are!

Stephanie, Amber, Ric, Nicole