I was trying to remember where I left off about my garden and realized that I wrote one post on it.  Lame.  We have vegetables and stuff now so this is kind of behind but I want to do it in chronological order.  It just makes more sense that way.  Except for the part where I pretty much forgot everything that happened in the beginning.  Luckily, there are pictures.  So, at least there's that.

Here, we have some mulch and compost.  They brought it to the house in a big truck and when I got home from work we brought it all to the backyard so that hoodlums wouldn't steal it overnight. 

 Then, we put the compost in rows.



Tilled the compost.



Watered the compost.


And that's pretty much it.  Oh yeah, and then we put on mulch.  But I don't think I have a picture of that.  So you'll just have to see what the mulch looks like in the next post when the plants are actually growing.

This is Winston.

Yeah, that's pretty much all of it.

So far, we've stopped there twice for gas.  It is expensive!  Both times, J went in to pay while I stayed outside taking random pictures.



The first time he went in, some guys (hunters?) wanted to know whether he had any maps of the ponds in the forest and got annoyed when he didn't.

 


The second time, he said he heard the word "wetback" so many times in the few minutes he was in there, that it made him uncomfortable.

You can learn a lot about a town by a visit to its General Store.

As of yesterday afternoon, Whitewater-Baldy is 87% contained and fire activity has decreased to a point where there will no longer be any more updates on the fire.  The post-fire assessment is also complete, at least from a soils standpoint.  I took some pictures of the fire while we were still camped to the West of it, at Pueblo Park Campground near Reserve and Glenwood.  It was cool looking.

That was a while ago.  I can no longer see nor smell the fire when I'm down in the Gila.  This is probably a good thing.  I can't believe it's already been over seven weeks since I began the field season.  That is ridiculous.  Last year at this time, well... we all know what happened last year.  This year, since 4th of July is on a Wednesday, I won't be going out to the field next week.  Yay!  I was hoping to go to Michigan, but that didn't really work out, so I'm thinking of just not going to work very much next week.  At first I thought I didn't have very much leave, but then I heard another girl say she only had 37 hours of leave.  And I thought, I have WAY more than that!  I should totally just take some time off.  So, that's what I'm going to do.  Because work is kinda stressing me out right now.  I might go camping for part of the time, but honestly, all I really want to do is go shopping and swimming and work on my scrapbooks.  Oh, and read.  I found The Brothers Karamazov on the bookshelf at work yesterday and got super excited.  Russian literature is pretty much always awesome.  I also have a strong desire to go to the library and look up books on ancient Chinese art and culture, because I think that would be fun.  But alas, much of today was spent running errands.  There is not enough time to do all the things I want to do.  I need a month long vacation, like right now.  Or just a bunch of mini vacations over the next several months.  I might actually be able to swing that one.  We'll see...

In case you live under a rock somewhere (unless that rock is in the Gila), there's a giant fire burning right now.  It's called the Whitewater-Baldy.  It's like 280,000 acres or something ridiculous like that.  Meanwhile, I've been doing field work, in the Gila, for about a month now.  We started work near the fabulous Truth or Consequences.  Then the fire started dropping ash from the sky so we decided to leave there and go somewhere else.  But first, here's a little bit about what happened in the first two weeks (or what I can remember of it).

The first week, we planned to camp at a little fire base called Beaverhead.  It's not as nice as Negrito, but it's ok.  The main thing we didn't like about it was there were a lot more firefighters there all the time, and we kind of wanted to not be around a bunch of other people, because we're antisocial like that.  The first night, it was just J and me, so we decided to find some random spot to camp after driving around all day.  This is what we came up with.

The next day, we went back to Beaverhead because we had to meet our coworker from Silver City, so we moved camp.

This is our crappy work tent that I don't like putting up.  It also has a broken pole.

And this is a random swing.  Yep.

My boss bought a new tent this year, for us to all hang out in or something when it rains.  It's really big.  We call it the circus tent.  We had to put it up and test it out the first week.  The guys don't like it.  I'm pretty much indifferent to it.

In the circus tent, not paying attention to the photographer

The second week, the smoke came and turned the sun red.

Ok, so I took this on my phone which is why the color sucks, but the sun was red, and it was not cloudy.  That is smoke.

The smoke affected all of us, but it hit the guys harder than me.  They felt like crap pretty much the whole time.  And that is why we moved the next week, to the west side of the fire, in hopes that it wouldn't be quite as smoky.  For the most part, it really hasn't been, so that's good.  But I've learned that it wouldn't be field season without some sort of issue(s).  Especially when I'm involved, it seems.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to write about that.  I might not.

There is a lot I need to post about.  Garden progress, field work, the giant fire in the Gila...  Right now, I will say that, despite my fire training, I will not be working on the current fire.  Instead, I have to be around to give our seasonal employee something to do.  I'm not blaming her.  I think she's awesome, and super smart.  But I am slightly resentful.  It's like it was planned that way on purpose.  Oh, well.  On the bright side, I am now enjoying my weekend off instead of spending my Saturday riding down to Silver City with my boss listening to Rush Limbaugh.  Blah.

Anyway, Chloe made a post and asked some questions, so I will answer them.

1. What is your favorite hobby?  Writing.  I try to write in my personal journal at least several times a week.  And I also want to start writing some less private/angst-ridden things, that could potentially get published some day.  Also, scrapbooking.  Sometimes I daydream about my scrapbooks...

2. Be honest: do you like your in-laws? Why/why not?  I like them a lot more now that they live in Kansas!  Haha.  No, really, they're not too bad.


3. What is your biggest dream?  Honestly, just to be successful, and to be happy doing what I love.  To have long-lasting meaningful friendships, and a relationship based on respect and trust.

4. What do you think about marriage?  I would like to be married, someday.  That's really my only opinion on it at the moment.

5. Babies: yes or no? How many?  Right now, we have a strict "no waaah" policy.  But in the long run, I'm not sure.

6. Any allergies?  I'm allergic to some random medications, including sulfa drugs and robitussin.  Also, the not being able to eat avocado thing.

7. What is your biggest fear?  Failure, and not being able to do or get what I want out of life because of that fear.

8. Would you like to be a working mom or SAHM?  Since I'm not sure I even want to be a mom, I'll go with working.

9. What is taboo for you?  Not much.  When you spend all your time camping with two guys, that kind of stuff pretty much goes out the window.

10. How much do spend in clothes every month?  I hardly ever spend money on clothes for myself.  My last time clothes shopping I used gift cards from Christmas.

11. Airplane, cruise, car or train?  I would take any of those methods of transportation, but for some reason, I really want to take a train somewhere.  The train station is right next to my office, and sometimes I imagine leaving work, getting on the train, and just going...

It all started with an onion.

It began sprouting on the kitchen counter, and Matt decided to plant it in the backyard.  Then he started thinking about potatoes, green chiles, bell peppers, beans, tomatoes...  And that is how the idea of the garden was born. 

This all happened about a month ago, and I've been hesitant to post about it up until now, because ... well, you know how these things go.  Plans change, people have differences of opinion, etc. etc.  But last week, we decided to go for it and really set our plan into motion. 

Let's backtrack a little bit, to a time when our little garden was merely a figment of our imaginations.  We started with a drawing.  In Paint.  I thought it was cute, but Matt later decided it was stupid and deleted it, so I won't be showing you that one.  Sorry.  But don't worry.  I have other pictures.

The first actual thing we did to start our garden was install the fencing, to keep the dog out.  It's a pretty simple design.  A 50 foot roll of fencing attached to steel posts by plastic zip ties.  The gate has a strip of wood at the end and is held closed by bungee cords.

Here's what we pulled up (with shovel for scale)

Now the fence was up and the weeds were gone, but we still hadn't committed to much yet.  The soil here is not spectacular for growing a vegetable garden on its own.  If I were a better soil scientist, I could explain why, but I'm not.  All I knew was we had to make it better somehow, so we began to look at our options. 

We are currently at a point where telling more of the story would involve me having to upload more pictures from my camera, which I don't really feel like doing right now, so you'll have to wait until later for part 2.

Hello, everyone!  Are you still there?  I am... I think.  Well, physically, maybe not mentally.  It has been requested that I write more posts.  Blogger went and changed the formatting on me while I was away, it seems.  It's kind of annoying. 

So, yeah, it's been a while.  I got a whole year older since I last posted.  Okay, not really a whole year, but I did turn 29.  I think most people who read this knew that already, though.  My birthday fell on a weekend this year, which was nice.  I went out to dinner at Sandiago's, which I'm surprised more people haven't heard of because it's right by the tram...  duh.  Anyway, it's good, and they have an awesome birthday deal where you get a FREE dinner AND dessert if you bring four people.  So I did.  The two margaritas might have racked up the bill a bit but, seriously, who can say no to fresh-brought-in-that-day watermelon blended into a frozen margarita-y goodness?

The next day we went to a pool party, and I thought about taking a picture because I very much enjoy taking pictures of pools... but I didn't.  Instead, I took one at the Hilton, which I went to this week for an amazing, spectacular Watershed, Air and Soils conference. 

it has a fricken water slide!

I went on Wednesday afternoon to hear my cubicle mate Susanna talk about air and dust and stuff.  Apparently, she's kind of a big deal.  The rest of the afternoon was fire talks, or rather, fire response and remediation talks.  My favorite parts were a research presentation by a guy from Idaho, and the drama that occurred on one of the forests last year.  Sadly, that probably held my attention better than anything else.  I'm a sucker for pain and suffering, when it's not happening to me.  But really, everything was pretty interesting.  It makes me excited to work on a fire this year.  If I ever get my darn red card.

In other news, I went to Silver City again and found a hotel that I like better than my usual Holiday Inn Express.  The Econo Lodge.  I know, right?  It is totally not scary, like I was expecting it to be.


I don't know how to end this so here's a picture of my dog.

How to Build a Fire is a depressing story by Jack London.  I'm not going to talk about that.  And I'm not going to talk about how to build a campfire either.  I'm going to talk about my firefighter refresher training that I took last Friday.

But... umm, wait a second.  Didn't I just take four days of fire training?  Oh yes, I did.  But boss W said I had to take it, and he's the boss, so there I was taking the same exact dang class watching the same videos that I just saw last month.  

There was one part that wasn't in my first class, though, and it was one of the most interesting parts of the whole day.  One of the meteorologists in my office recorded a powerpoint presentation on five predictive fire factors, and how each of them played out in 2011, one of the most historic fire seasons in our region.  The factors are:

Drought
Fine fuels (small stuff, like grass and forbs and baby trees)
Seasonal temperature and precipitation
Spring and early Summer weather patterns
Monsoons

He then provided a history and showed a map of the occurrence of each of these factors in the winter and spring of 2010-2011. The map showed that all of them lined up pretty much perfectly with each other to create greater than normal fire conditions in 2011.  The three big fires of last season, the Wallow, Horseshoe II, and and Las Conchas, were all located exactly in the ring of fire.

Next he went on to discuss the conditions for 2012.  So far, this year has been cooler with more precipitation, but we are losing snow pack when we should be gaining it.  Additionally, the shift to El Nino occurs this year.  Fire conditions are dependent on how fast or slow this shift is.

As for the five factors, this is how they are currently playing out this year:
Drought- still continuous
Fine fuels - a more normal amount with some snow compaction
Seasonal temp/precip - a more rapid shift to El Nino is favorable for reducing fire conditions
Weather pattern - more "normal" than last year
Monsoon - wetter across the west and drier across the east (of our region)

Basically, this means it's still up in the air as to exactly how the fire conditions will be this year, but there are indications that it won't be as bad as last year.  I wanted to write about all of this because I think it's really interesting.  I like weather and climate stuff a lot.  Probably more than mapping and geomorphology, although I still love working with soil and plants.  I'll try to make my next post have more pictures and less science.

Cochiti is our puppy.

We got him in January.  Yes, I've wanted a puppy pretty much my whole life (seriously, I dreamed in puppies) and now that I have one, I waited two months to even mention it.

Why, I have no idea.  Probably because I'm lazy, and because having a puppy takes away some of my energies (he has enough for all three of us).  I've heard people say having a puppy is like having a baby.  I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that it is definitely not.  Not that I have much experience in the baby department, but I think it's a fair assumption.

It is definitely work, though.  Especially when your puppy is just a little bit, well... let's call it "special."  But he's sweet and he means well.  He definitely has a lot of personality.  For brevity's sake, I will bullet-point his most interesting and noteworthy characteristics.

• From the beginning, his favorite toy has been a plastic flower pot.  He loves flailing it around, throwing it in the air, and just generally trying to rip it to shreds.
•  One day, he had said flower pot on his head and he ran right off the porch because he couldn't see that he was on the edge.
• He's a heeler, so he LOVES biting feet.  It's pretty much his favorite thing, besides the flower pot.
• He goes wild over snow.  Just the tiniest little patch, and he's happy happy happy.
• At my apartment, he once decided to pee on the sliding glass door.  I'm pretty sure he thought he was going outside.  At least he tried...
• He has a serious underbite and could use some doggie headgear.
• The bottom of his paws smell like popcorn.
• His poppers STINK!
• He has demolished countless small sticks
• He mows his food faster than a crocodile in the Nile.  And he snaps his jaws like one too.
• He sometimes thinks "good boy" means he can immediately start being bad.
• He has gained 5 lbs since we got him.  We think he might be part German Shepherd.
• He is very capable of jumping up on top of the kitchen table.
• He is very affectionate and likes to cuddle with us in the morning.  He has also decided it's a good idea to put his head on the pillow.
• When he dreams, he acts like he is running and makes tiny little barks.
• He runs like a madman in the hills.  Seeing how much fun he has always puts a smile on my face.

Hello anyone out there who still reads this.   It's been a while.  February was a ridiculously busy month.  I didn't have one weekend off.  The first two weekends, I had to drive to Silver City.  Yes, I had to drive there and come back... twice.  But I didn't mind, because I was doing something I really wanted to do, which was...  firefighter training!

Last summer, while I was off breaking the truck, the rest of my crew was in Arizona doing remediation work on the Wallow Fire.  I was the only one out of my entire staff (including the students) without fire training and therefore couldn't go along.  Needless to say, I felt left out.  At the end of the fiscal year, our travel budget was cut (again) and I thought there wouldn't be any extra money for trainings, so I tried not to be too disappointed about another summer of working alone while everyone else went off without me again.

But when I got back from the holiday break, something incredible happened.  My boss came by and said, "We have some extra travel money, and W [his boss] wants you take fire training this year, so... find a class."  YAY!

It was actually really hard to find a class.  I kept getting different information and getting referred to different people.  But I finally found one.  In Silver City.  Over two weekends.  Silver City is about 4 and 1/2 hours away, if you take the shortcut.  More if you try to go through Hatch and Deming.  And even longer if you have to do what I did last year, and go all the way down to Las Cruces.  Blah.  So it was a long drive and  totally killed my weekends but, like I said, I really wanted to do it, so I sucked it up and went.

The weekend of Feb 4 and 5 was the first weekend of the training, and I learned A LOT.  There is so much information.  We learned all about wildland fire behavior in one day.  And then took a test.  So in one day, I had already completed 1/4 of the 4-part course.  The class was actually pretty big, with about 30-32 people, most of them volunteer firefighters from different departments around Southwest New Mexico.  It's weird to see all these middle aged and older people who want to fight fires for no money, when all I really want to do is go around and look at stuff that's already been burned (because I'm a wussie) and get paid for it.

Required reading for firefighters.

Wildland fire behavior reminded me a lot of physical geography, because it deals with how weather affects fire.  Wind, thunderstorms, relative humidity, air temperature, etc.  I also learned a lot about how the actual fire behaves.  It's pretty cool, actually.

And now, because my geology professor once said that drawing pictures helps you learn and remember things, I give you the parts of a fire:

In case you cannot tell from my amazing drawing skills, this is a fire in aerial view

Origin - Every fire has an origin, but it's not always at the lowest point on the fire like I've drawn.  There can be other factors, like the tree that initially ignited could have fallen and rolled down the hill, thus bringing the fire down with it.

Head - this is the biggest, scariest part of the fire.  It's the place where the fire is spreading the fastest.

Flank - These are basically the sides of the fire that aren't the head.  They are the coolest part of the fire (temp-wise), so that's where the firefighters are usually sent first to start containing or controlling the fire.  They say go up the right or left flank instead of using directions like North, South, East and West, because it's too hard to tell that kind of thing when there's a fire burning all around you. 

Heel - This is the "bottom" of the fire.  It has the slowest rate of spread and is opposite the head.

Finger - Extension that is still connected to the main fire

Pocket - Unburned portion between the finger and the main fire.  You DON'T want to be there.  If the fire jumps across and closes the pocket, you are screwed.

Island - A part inside the fire that isn't burning.  It may be a rock outcrop or a lake or a change in fuel type.  Just something different that decided not to burn for some reason.

Spot Fire - These happen when a piece of fire (yes I said piece, whatever) is lofted out into the atmosphere and lands on a fuel bed.  It's not connected to the main fire.

The entire outer boundary of the fire is called the perimeter and the already burnt middle part is called the black, so I made it black in the picture.  Doesn't it totally look like a burnt forest?  Yeah, I thought so.