Botanist in Training

Alexia came with me this week to go back out to Brown Ranch in North Dakota. This week I was training 2 new field assistants who will be doing a lot of vegetation surveys this summer. Botany is not my forte and so really the botanists in training were all of us, not just Lexi. It was a HOT week in North Dakota. It has been in the 80s and got well into the 90s on Thursday. Fortunately the bunk house there is air conditioned but it got a little warm in the field for Lexi. We tried to make sure we stayed hydrated. One of the pictures below is Lexi and I with my three field assistants, and one of them is Lexi and I with my supervisor, Meredith, who has been very supportive of me hauling Lexi around with me in the field. As you can see, Lexi likes the Baby Bjorn, if only for the fact that it provides an easy thing to suck on. Overall, she did great in the field and at the bunk house, but she really protested being in her car seat, which made the car ride pretty painful. Part of the problem is that she has gotten good enough to pull her pacifier out of her mouth, as you can see below, but she has not yet figured out how to get it back in when she wants it back. That just makes her mad. She is getting closer though so hopefully our next few car rides won't be so bad.