You WISH you were eating these cakes!!!!!!
We miss you, Mimi!
You too, Greg!
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So, for another update from the luxurious Hjelm house, which is THE place to be this summer. We recently had the wireless router in the basement stop allowing people to log on to the network wirelessly, so Stuart ordered a new wireless router, along with an 8 port switch so that we can have more than 3 computers connected at the same time. They got here yesterday, and I took them downstairs to set up. The entire process of setting up took about 20 minutes, and everything worked like a charm. I hooked the cable modem up to the router, set up the router DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, used to assign IP addresses to computers on the network), and hooked the router up to the switch, after mounting them on the wall. However, I wanted to see if we could get wireless access in the Wagenius house, about 60 metres away. Setting the router up near the window in the basement did not work, so I moved the router upstairs. After a couple hours trying various spots, it was placed in Stuart’s office, which offered easy access to an Ethernet jack, as well as a convenient window. In order to enable both the wireless router and the wall jacks, while preserving the network, I had to disable DHCP on the new wireless router, and place the old one downstairs to act as a DHCP distributing thingy for the house. It took me a couple hours to figure this out as well, since I thought the wireless router could perform the same function through the switch. Anyway, to cut a long boring story short, the new router upstairs fell just short of the Wagenius house computer’s range, so using the excellent resources of (Lifehack.com, I made three parabolic reflectors out of cardboard and tin foil to boost the signal. They worked like a charm! They are originally the idea of this site: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/, and I got the template to build the antennas from here: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html. Some pictures of the new wireless router:
Come to the farm for a picnic celebrating the near end of the Echinacea season. I’ll be making pesto and roasted zucchini and yellow squash. Jean is making brownies. We’ll provide drinks and s’more necessities-including a monster burn pile. Hope to see you 6:30ish. I found a few things besides Echinacea plants, while searching for plants that may have died in the common garden. I found a fossil shell. I gave it to Per and he held on to it for a while but dropped it. Someone else will find it! I found a stylus (for a handspring visor). It’s probably Gretel’s; she lost hers earlier this year. I found a snake skin with an intact top of head–the eyes were transparent-cool! Per gave to Hattie, I think. I found a mouse in a mouse nest (right on top of dead Echinacea leaves from last year). The mouse bounded away. Also, Ruth called while I was searching to say that she had just found the serial cord for the survey station data collector that we couldn’t find–we had been looking for that for a few days. Wahoo! Finally, I emptied my pockets of litter that I had picked up: three pieces of flagging, one melted plastic plug label, and 2 blue plastic cocktail stirrers.
Stuff from Stuart’s pocket: stylus (1), flagging bits (3),
melted plastic plug label (1), blue plastic cocktail stirrers (2) We are making great progress on annual measurements of plant in the common garden. On Monday we finished measuring all plants (~10000). On Tuesday we finished placing staples at all locations where plants died overwinter in 2007-2008 (>700). Today we made a huge dent in “rechecks.” Rechecking is when we revisit all the locations where we recorded a “can’t find” and left a flag while measuring. We placed about 1500 flags. About 700 of those “can’t finds” were stapled this year. So, we just verified that staples were in the correct locations and pulled flags. Some locations had staples from previous years that a measurer didn’t find. We pulled flags there too. Then there were the plants that were alive last year. We rechecked those and found quite a few plants. Each time someone found one, they yelled “wahoo” and the rest of us responded with a whoop and a holler. Shucks, it was fun!! Actually I was burned out by the end. Next year we should plan two 2h sessions instead of one 4h session. Perplexed by Stuart’s question – a trip to the hilltop here in Watertown, and Mimi’s poster, I checked again on the amorpha pollen – it is NOT bean shaped. But I do have reliable pictures – (Amanda don’t bother getting its pollen tomorrow) What keeps amorpha and medicago sativa from occupying the same locations? Legume wars underground? Does Andrea have insight? Listen up, Echinacea fans! I’ve now finished making slides and taking photos of the first 68 insect visitors–only 107 left to go. Here are some photos of the process: 1) Here is an insect carrying LOADS of pollen (haha! get it?) which I am about to transfer onto a small agar cube on a microscope slide. 2) I heat the slide, complete with pollen-covered agar cube and cover slip, on a hotplate. Next I throw the completed, labeled slide under the microscope camera and take photos like these
3) I’ve pinned each specimen with a unique ID code that corresponds to its vial ID number.
The most common genera near as I can tell from the reference collection are… Male Melissodes sp. And Ceratina sp. Please leave questions or comments and I’ll do my best to respond! -Amanda On Medicago sativa in CG–Melissodes? |
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