Hello my fellow CLMers,

I am back on for my second round as an intern in the Medford, OR BLM office.  I started about a month and a half earlier this year as a result of getting into grad school at Humboldt State University and will be having to move in June.  I got accepted into the Biology program and will be focusing on insect community ecology.  I strongly feel that my 10 month internship doing botanical work here with the Medford BLM really solidified my wanting to go back to school, and helped with my acceptance.

Even though I have begun early in order to get a few months of my internship in before I have to leave, it has proved to be quite productive.  No intern in the 13 year history of the Seeds of Success program at the Medford BLM has ever started this early.  That means a whole new set of early blooming plants that are ready and waiting to be vouchered and added to our extensive herbarium of over 3,500 specimen.  I have been out and about a few times already this year to many locations I went to last year, and I am witnessing an entirely knew community of flora.  Also, the fact that we have had a horrible winter (snow-pack being at 19% of normal average as of last month) has also been a factor that proves my early start date has been beneficial, as everything is popping up early.  I have also been scouting out new places and keeping me eye on what species will start to seed.  I am hoping to make my first SOS collection sometime in early April.

It is nice coming back to a second term after already getting the hang of things here in the office and in the field.  I spent the first 2 months last year trying to figure out the protocol and get caught up to speed on basic botanical jargon, but now I have just hit the ground running and I am feeling good about the productivity of this year.  We have another SOS intern coming on in April, so fortunately there will be some overlap with us and I can teach him what I know about the program, and he can take over the work load from there.