Fall has hit the Southwest.  Temperatures have dropped, the bosques are yellow-tinged, and BLM employees have unwillingly pulled out their flannels.  There appears to be a general consensus that this is the best season – and I concur, based solely on the fact that field work is much more pleasant when you aren’t sizzling (metaphorically and literally).

My report for the month will be fairly slim because about half the month was lost to the government shutdown.  I made the most of my undesired vacation by attempting to exercise, nullifying all exercise attempts by making delectable foodstuffs, watching movies (Like depressing? Watch Doctor Zhivago!), and stuffing my brain with reading. The most annoying part of the shutdown was fielding the inevitable questions, “How’s the shutdown going? Any word on when it will end?” My internal responses: “I think the shutdown is doing great because everything is shutdown!” AND “Well, in my personal conversation with John Boehner today he wouldn’t give me any hints”.

But alas! We returned to work and scurried around to check if any of our potential collections were still viable. Most were, and we’ve been making speedy work of finishing up our collection season.  Soon we will be moving onto some interesting projects that include monitoring some previously-planted sand bluestem and cataloging night-blooming cereus cacti.

I’ll end this post with some key hints/tips related to seed collecting:

1. When it is windy outside, bring a top for your bucket. Watching hundreds of feathery, miniscule seeds blow out of your bucket is highly demoralizing.

2. When you find yourself collecting seeds in a huge grassy area out of sight from your co-workers, follow this procedure: sit down, close eyes, pretend you’re Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. Repeat for maximum atmospheric effect.

3.  Have a strategy for remembering what hundred number of seeds you’ve collected – forgetting what number you’re on when you need 2,000 seeds gets old quickly.