the experiment begins

 I didn't sleep so well last night; part of it is it's been so hot for so long and even with air conditioning I think that heat stress builds up in your body like other stress does, and while it's easy to recover from a day or two of hot weather, we're going on (mostly - we had a couple cooler days last weekend) weeks and weeks of this, and we have weeks and weeks to go.

And part of it is I'm just anxious about fieldwork: will I remember everything I need? Will there be other people out there who might be worrisome (there was an incident a couple years ago where a guy being chased by the police ran off into the site. they caught him, but I still remember it). I worry about things like stepping in a hole and breaking an ankle, or being overcome by the heat, or or or. And as I said: I have my phone so if I were "recoverably" injured I could call for help and get it, but not if I were incapacitated.

And this time - the secretary wasn't in so I couldn't even say "hey if I don't check in by 11 am, call me at my cell number, and if I don't answer this is where I am, send someone to look for me"

(And also: "remember sunscreen. Remember bug repellant. Remember enough water. Remember the tools you need....")

But I got out there okay, there was no one else out there (didn't even see a deer; in the past deer have startled me when I've been out there

Dropping some photos here so I can easily find them again if I need them laer

There are three locations I grabbed litter from. First, a big stand of sericea lespedeza, the invasive species. I want to see if it attracts fewer detritivores given that it has some unpalatable compounds and lots of tannins:

It's EVERYWHERE out there, which actually makes it harder to find "grassland type" vegetation without it present but I did find a little pocket of some grasses, and probably grass-leaved goldenrod, and common ragweed (not native, but whatever) to collect from

And then the forested area, mostly winged elm (which is native but also kind of a weedy tree species). Here, I just picked the leaves up off the forest floor:

I also took a field selfie. Yes, the smile is a little forced but it was hot, I'd been out there for over an hour, and I was getting tired

I put the collected litter in paper bags (like lunchbags) and carried it back to campus and put it in the drying oven. And I'm kinda done for now, at least until my tracing paper comes and I can make the litter bags. And at any rate, the litter has to dry for 24 hours. I came home and showered (always a good idea after being outside where there might be ticks) and I might go back in after lunch and do some reading or read over the first final paper I had turned in to me.