I was finally able to use all the comp time that piled up over the season and I have to say, it was well worth the extra hours. A few weeks ago I took a trip to the Grand Canyon National Park. It was incredible. Similar to the vibrant colors of a tropical ocean, no photograph can portray the overwhelming visual stimulation that accompanies a real life experience at the grand canyon. This was definitely the highlight of my summer. 

Aside from a great vacation, work continues to stay busy. Minus the intimidating stack of herbarium vouchers to organize and send, Seeds of Success has finally come to an end for the 2014 season. Tackling this endeavor independently has taught me a lot. It has forced me to take initiative, ask a lot of questions, keep an organized schedule and be patient. It was not an easy task however, the sense of accomplishment and professional growth that I have developed made every minute worth it. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned was to be patient and know that field work typically does not go as planned. There will always be obstacles and set backs but if you learn to be flexible, innovative and make decisions on the fly, everything will work out in the end. Just stick with it.

The weather is changing quickly but there is still plenty of work to be done. The seed we ordered for Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation has been slow to arrive. It has been a bit of a nightmare trying to track down each shipment and simultaneously organize the workforce necessary to complete the planting. We have completed a few hundred acres of drill seeding and there is more to be done.  However, our seed shipments were backed up and we no longer have access to the equipment or work staff for this season. On top of that, the snow has already begun to fly and it is a race against the clock. Focusing on broadcast seeding and hand planting will bring us to the end of our field season very soon.

It has been a whirlwind trying to keep up with the daily operations at the Surprise Valley Field Office due to very limited staff.  However, I have been given more opportunities than I could ask for, which I am overwhelmingly grateful for. I will continue to work for Surprise through the winter, acquiring new skills and facing new challenges every day. This experience continues to impress me and I encourage anyone with an interest in conservation and land management to apply for this program.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Amy Thorson- BLM Surprise Valley FO

Fall brought some drastic changes to my life here in Carson City. The first time my gloves froze to my handlebars, I knew I was in for a dramatic couple months. In September, a tiny kitten, not more than 5 weeks old, moved into the space between the insulation and the floorboards of my house. After 2 days of quiet mewing echoing up through the heating vents, I decided that our new housemate needed to move upstairs. Andrii (another intern), Oksana (his wife), and I rent a prefab house on the eastern edge of town. We’ve loved this shabby little place since the very first day we moved in. Unfortunately, the house hasn’t really loved us back. A leaky roof, dripping pipes, hidden mold, ant infestations, fruit fly swarms; we’ve had it all. 2 weeks after we moved in, our kitchen mysteriously disappeared one evening. We got back from the field to discover our refrigerator was not where we had left it! And now it appeared that, to top it all off, we had a critter in distress somewhere below our feet. I donned my PPE (I didn’t take the DOI learn HAZWOPER course for nothing!) and army-crawled into the dust and grime. I made it out wheezy, sneezy, and clutching a new best friend. We called him Griffey or Kits, after the famous baseball player and the Ukrainian word for “hey cat!” He has quickly become accustomed to the pampered life of an adventurous kitten.

After such drastic changes in weather and family structure, a change in employment really shouldn’t faze me. But after 9 months living, tromping, and adventuring in the sagebrush and the sierras, it’s a shock to the system to consider leaving.

Carson City is where I learned to monitor fires, to assess riparian habitats, to identify great basin flora, and why the coyotes cry to the stars at night. My tent has been my home in the dunes of Death Valley, the granite slabs of Yosemite, the canyons of Dixie Valley, and almost everywhere in between. I’ve gawked and gasped at innumerable stunning plants, from the delicate blooms of the rare Webber’s ivsia (Ivsia webberi) to the ancient wisdom of the bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva). “Oodles” doesn’t even come close to the amount I’ve learned and experienced.

I owe a tremendous debt to my mentor, Dean, and our fantastic team. Whether we were fixing flats, purposefully getting stung by fiddleneck (Amsinkia tesselata), or searching mountains for rebar and rare plants, they helped me maintain my positive attitude and appreciate every moment in the lovely landscape. When times got tough or the plants got feisty, these excellent people always had my back.

For Science!

Rebecca Mostow
Sierra Front Field Office, BLM
Carson City, NV

Hello Everyone!

My CLM position here in the Mojave Desert has continued into the late fall, and I’ll be here at least until mid-December. Maybe even longer. Like everywhere else in the country, the days have become shorter and colder here. Unlike most other places, our daytime high temperatures are still in the 70’s and 80’s. I could say that the nighttime temps in the 40’s feel pretty cold to me, but my friends and family back in Illinois probably won’t let me get away with that. But after the oppressive heat of summer, it is delightful to have weather that makes everyone else jealous.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Of course, the ecology of the desert is changing with the seasons, and one of the interesting things that I’m seeing is that the plant life here is staying active even as we move into winter. I’m used to plants that have hunkered down into dormancy by this time of year. That is not the case here in the Mojave. There are a few plants that have dropped their leaves during the dry autumn, but most have remained unchanged in anticipation of winter rains. Some species are still holding seeds, and some are even in full bloom right now! I was in a wash this week that was full of the yellow flowers of two shrubs that I am just now seeing in bloom for the first time. I think that is great.

The continuing reproductive activity of the plants means that I have been able to stay busy making seed collections in November. Here are some highlights:

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These plants absolutely glow in the evening sun. It is quite lovely.

Many of the big washes in my field office have turned into rivers of golden yellow this fall, as they have been filled with blooming Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). This species is a shrub in the Asteraceae family. It grows as a round bush up to about 2 meters tall, and 3 to 4 meters wide. The blooming rabbitbrush has created some absolutely beautiful landscapes in the last month or so, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. This one was an easy collection to make, as the plants contained tens of thousands of their fluffy, wind-dispersed seeds. The plants are pretty sticky and pungent with a strong but sweet smell, so I ended up smelling like Ericameria for the rest of the day, which was fine with me.

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush). These seeds were just about to fly off to who knows where before I snatched them up.

Another very easy collection that I made a couple weeks ago was of Chilopsis linearis arcuata (desert willow). This species is not a true willow (willows are the genus Salix), but it is a tree with narrow linear leaves that look similar to Salix. Chilopsis linearis is more closely related to Catalpa trees. Desert willows produce long, thin seed pods that are loaded with 50 or more seeds that have dense, white, tufts of hair. When these trees were blooming earlier in the year their white, pink, or purple flowers were very popular with sphinx moths (also called hawk moths). These moths look very much like hummingbirds in the way they hover around flowers. For a week in August, thousands of sphinx moths congregated around the desert willows, so that you could hear the air buzzing with their wing beats. Those were amazing days.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). You can see that the leaves do look pretty similar to true willows.

Chilopsis linearis (desert willow). Here are a couple of seed pods that are just about ready to burst open.

Here’s one more for now. Last week I made a collection of Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). This species is a forb that I’ve seen growing to just shy of 1 meter in height. Last week was the first time I have come across this species, but the population I found was pretty impressive. Thousands and thousands of copper globemallow covered the shallow wash I was exploring. That makes for some easy collecting. A few of the plants were still blooming, and showing off their very pretty orange flowers, but most were full of their unusual fruits. If you look at the picture I’ve included, you can see the seed capsules, which some people will describe as little cheese wheels. When they open up, those capsules will drop 10-20 small seeds to the ground. As I finished this collection with the light fading and temperature dropping in the late afternoon, one of my coworkers made an observation. Many of the remaining orange flowers on the Sphaeralcea now contained a bee. The bees weren’t buzzing around collecting nectar, but instead had curled up inside the flowers and were sitting still. My coworker said that they would sleep that way through the night. I had never seen bees do this before, and I thought it was really cool!

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow).

Sphaeralcea angustifolia (copper globemallow). Notice the “cheese wheel” fruits on this plant. Kind of quirky.

All right, that’s enough for now. All you people in colder climates, stay warm!

Ericameria paniculata (Mojave rabbitbrush)

Until next time,

-Steve

Needles Field Office, BLM

Time has flown by; the last 10 months have been jammed pack with various forms of experience. This experience involved weed mapping, range assessments, drought monitoring, fire monitoring, sensitive species monitoring, herbarium management, native seed collections, various trainings and data management. While working in Nevada we ran into many interesting things, these many interesting things proved that Nevada is random. Here are a few examples:

An old building from an abandoned farm.

An old miners cup found at an old site.

A tree carrying a heart that was carved into it a long time ago.

Sometimes while working you find yourself in the middle of Fire Suppression practice.

Just another vehicle on the road… an armored vehicle.

A full belt of bullets that was discarded and still rests under an Artemisia.

In the middle of nowhere there is a random hot spring.

A random red gate that pops out of nowhere.

These are only a few of the random things that Nevada provided. Nevada definitely became a wonderful source of entertainment while we worked. Thank you  Nevada.