Time Travel Suggestions

 What are your favorite books and movies about traveling through time?

I have written about a few time traveling books on this blog in the past (Connie Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog and The Time Machine and mentioned Time Traveler's Wife on multiple occasions).

The Mister and I are starting to list time travel movies we've seen and they range from Star Trek to Looper to Arrival to Interstellar to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 

Let us know what you think! 

Time for a New Year: Time Titles and Books about Time

 What are your favorite books or movies "about time" or with time in the title, but not about time travel?  Non-fiction (from timekeeping and the nature of time to seasons of life) and fiction both desired. 

Have recommendations for  Love in the Time of Cholera or A Brief History of Time or A Time to Kill or Wheel of Time?  How about Gone in 60 Seconds, 72 Hours, 28 Days Later, 9 1/2 weeks, 4 Months, 2 weeks and 3 Days, or 100 Years of Solitude?

"Time" books go here, along with media with minutes, seconds, or years in the title.

Growing Mushrooms

I started MYCOCHRONOS in the winter of 2021 growing oyster mushrooms in the lab, and then grew blue oysters, pink oysters, and lion's mane mushrooms at home.  They were all from kits and all are highly recommended.  The lion's mane was used for "crab cakes" which were great, and also makes one wonder if the crab flavoring or the crab cake seasonings is what really makes the taste. 

January 27== middlewas started 1 week priot

Second flush of pink oysters

Truffles

 I haven't been blogging about MYCOCHRONOS- the time of the fungus for all sorts of reasons.  You can trust that I have done a good job of growing mushrooms, eating mushrooms, and observing fungal things  (or not, it's actually not a matter worthy of asking for your trust).  
The Mister, ever willing to celebrate silly with me, gave me truffle oil and truffle salt for Christmas, and ordered the truffle supplement when we took Dianthus and Aster out for an omakase meal in Boston.  Then, in a surprise move, he purchased a fresh black truffle at Eataly when we found ourselves back in Boston on January 1.
Salmon sashimi with truffles was amazing, and covered with a lot of truffles.
We used our truffle on pasta one night, on mashed potatoes and beef the next, and on poached eggs and potatoes this morning.  While I really like the heady aroma of truffles, I think I will seek out chefs to do it well, or add a little splash of oil here and there, but will not be buying fresh truffles again soon.  Among other things, I think we just didn't use enough at once, but when something is so dear (in the British sense), it feels right to ration it, even if possession in the first place is the height of indulgence.

Thanks to the Mister for trying truffles with me.

Heavily truffled delicious start to an omakase meal.

Our truffle of 34 grams

Kites and Flowers

 I was walking to work this morning (Monday, May 3) and thinking how odd it was that I haven't seen a kite yet.
I walked home at 10:30 and there were 12 on the power lines in one alley.  
Two friends around town mentioned seeing single kites over the weekend, and they certainly aren't ALL here yet, but I would argue that they truly arrived approximately 9 am this morning.
(In 2020 I saw 2 on April 30 and then a larger bunch on May 1.)

In my other annual phenology update: here's my May Day bouquet (actually picked on May 2).  The peony is the only peony currently in flower (from against a south-facing brick wall), the irises are at about peak, and none of the roses, honeysuckle, or mock oranges is blooming yet.  The wheat is from the growing wheat patch (last year I baked a loaf of bread from it).  My next career might be growing grains for the florist industry.  The Mister suggests that might not be much of a career, but one can hope.

I Count Plants: What I Study Part 2

Setting out Kansas transects June 2020

"What do you really mean when you say you count plants?"

Um, I mean I go outside and count how many plants are there.

This somehow frequently makes me giggle.  When I was interviewing for my current job, I asked why Plant Physiology was part of the job description when one of my colleagues is an algal physiologist seemingly well-suited to teaching the course.  The algal physiologist explained that he is not really a physiologist, he is more of an eco-physiologist and went on to explain what he does (physiological responses of algal grown in different light conditions to different types of radiation).  It was an interview and I wanted the job, so I didn't blurt out, "You know that I count plants, right?"

A 3m x 3m plot Kansas 2020

Most years I go to Kansas where I re-find plot corners in a prairie hay meadow (now using a metal detector called "The Gold Digger") based on triangulation from fixed fence posts (hand held GPS is still not nearly as accurate as walking 45m from that post and 55m from this one).  A dear friend and I search 3m x 3m plots looking for every prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) within the plot.  When we find one, we record its location based on the tape measure that is temporarily making a plot frame and record its height, spread, and reproductive status.  We eventually compare to the individual information from the previous year, so not only do we have a sense of what is happening to the population overall, we also know fates of individuals.  Eventually, these year-to-year individual transitions are combined into a matrix to make projections about the population as a whole.  I counted these particular plots in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020.  I have also counted a population in Nebraska 2002, 2003, and 2004 and a population in Montanta 2001-2004.

Flags are bases of Cyclanthera Sept. 2019

In Oklahoma, I am tracking a population of annual vines, so there is no year-to-year survival.  Since 2010, students and I have documented the location, size and reproductive status of every plant in a woodland 5 miles from campus.  While most years the population has had 100-400 individuals, we have counted as few as 11 (2011) and as many as 2,748 (2019).  We do this in September and October, when the plants are flowering and fruiting.  Concerned that I was missing a critical step in the life cycle, in 2016 we started a spring plot count and in 2019 and 2020 I am re-visiting the plots all summer so that I can document within-season survivorship.  In 2018 there were more seedlings in the plots in May than there were in May 2019, even though there were only 44 plants in the fall 2018 population compared to 3,000 in fall 2019.  Locations are recorded as vectors (compass degrees plus distance) from marked reference trees.

Most years I also document the populations of invasive plants, tree-of-heaven, johnsongrass, and giant reed in and around my small town.  These involves actually counting trees and estimating their size and measuring patches of grasses and estimating their growth.

An early freeze in 2019, along with 3,000 plants
led to counting locations of flags hastily placed
before the plants actually disintegrated.

Sometime later-- the answer to the more interesting questions-- why these particular plants? and what do we learn from these counts?

Spring 2020

 

Ecological Big Questions: What I Study Part 1

I've been asked by some friends to explain what I do, science-wise.  I'm stunned and having a hard time of it.

This is a novel query-- most folks have no interest and those that are interested usually already work in the field.  So I am writing it out here so that I can figure out the best way to say it, and direct people here should there every be similar queries again. 

My actual job is almost entirely teaching.  Research and scholarly activities are expected, but there is little time for them during the school year and institutionally little reward for doing more (and also few negative consequences for doing less, a real perk as a parent and a teacher who would, in fact, perish in a "publish or perish" system).  I also have a bunch of "scholarship adjacent" roles-- herbarium curator, greenhouse manager, invasive species monitor, and teaching materials editor-- for which I have never figured out fully how to receive "credit" (nor, in fact, figured out who is doing the crediting).

Summer 2019

As a researcher, I align with one of the most basic ecological questions, "Why are organisms where they are?"  Ecology has a geographic component (it's the interactions of organisms and their environment, after all), but as I type I realize that the temporal component is as important: "Why are organisms where and WHEN they are, and how do those change?"

I'm also fascinated by the core question of conservation biology, "How can humans simultaneously use and converse natural resources?"

These questions, of course, are addressed by all ecologists and conservation biologists, and I am not going to answer them anytime soon, but they are behind what I do.  At this point I choose to look at terrestrial plant populations, but I have done community level work in the past, and am very interested in ecosystem-level and individual-level processes.