Hi all!

Just finished up my third month here in the Bakersfield Field Office with the Bureau of Land Management, and boy is it getting hot!!  Silly humans, making cities in the desert.. anyway, this last month has been a little trying, as we are having to be patient and wait for the few accessions of seeds we’ve targeted become ripe.  It has been an especially dry year here and so my co-worker and I have only gotten about 15 collections in these last few months.  Better than nothing for sure, but in a good year, we would have come away with a lot more.  Oh well, ya do whatcha can.  Most of what we’ve been doing though, has been Seeds of Success work.  We also out out on RHA’s (rangeland health assessments) and travel to sites for maintenance tasks like fence repair and invasive species removal, but a lot of our our summer has been traveling between sites with our fingers crossed that we’ve come at just the perfect time to collecte seed.  Recently, we were back up in the San Joaquin River Gorge and managed to collect four different species on our overnight trip – Brodiaea elegans (Harvest Brodiaea), Castilleja attenuata (attenuate Indian paintbrush), Collinsia heterophylla (purple Chinese houses) and Phacelia egena (rock Phacelia or Kaweah River Phacelia).

I also went to Lamont Meadows recently, on the Back Country Byway, where I saw my very first Western diamondback rattlesnake.  I also saw some great, showy plants which have been lacking down in the dry, sunny valley.  I saw some western columbine (Aquilegia formosa), a sweet penstemon (I believe it’s Penstemon grinnellii, not sure of the ssp.), the lovely indian paintbrush (Castilleja sp.) and a beautiful native thistle (Cirsium occidentale, did not key to ssp.).  We were at 5600 feet, which availed itself to   flowers still in bloom for me to ogle over!

Castilleja sp.

Aquilegia formosa

Western diamondback rattle snake

Penstemon grinnellii

Cirsium occidentale

Digging up the invasive bull thistle, Cirsium vulgare

Yep, we got a flat! 🙂

I’ve yet to experience all the reaches of our field office, as I haven’t been up into the Sierra foothills or over to the coast yet, but our mentor already had a lot on his plate before we came along, so it’s understandable that he doesn’t have all the time in the world to show us around our area.  There’s a small chance though that I’ll get over the coast, to Point Sal and up to Case Mountain in the Sierras before I leave, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed!  The weather has been showing its muscle as it was in the low 100’s for three or four days straight, recently.  I am really scared of this hot weather! lol  I just fill up my camel back and bring some extra bottles of water and hope for the best!  We are in the middle of a high 80’s stint right now though, so I am just stoked about that!  I love seeing how my temperature baseline changes depending on where I live.. a couple months ago it was only like 75 out and I had goosebumps! lol

I hope everyone is having a great summer and is staying cool and hydrated!  Best wishes to everyone for as much education and adventure as you can handle!  🙂

Until next time,

Rachel Snyder

BLM, Bakersfield, CA