without further adoo....

Here is that flower I promised you oh so long ago!

and here is todays photo:

ahhhhh! its kittttttty!

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long day!

I'm sorry, I forgot.  I didn't send the flower photo to myself but PERHAPS I will remember tomorrow!  To be fair, of the 10 and a half hours I worked today, I spent only about 45 minutes of it in the office.  All the rest was out "in the field" as we like to call it.  I spent the day mapping trails on a CTC parcel and working on estimations of volume of fill needed to repair a badly eroding trail.  The bright side:  the trails led to the top of a rock overlooking the lake that was downright gorgeous.  The down side:  I probably hiked the equivalent of climbing that rock 4 times in my efforts to GPS all of the trails on this particular property.  Anyway, because I have forgotten again to get a hold of yesterdays picture, today you get a bonus picture; because 2 is better than 1.  Here are TWO lovely photos from my day, taken from the top of Eagle Rock overlooking Lake Tahoe.

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problem...

I did take a photo for today, I swear!  The problem:  I took it on the work camera, made plans to email it to myself, and then promptly forgot after heading from the room where I have to upload the photos back to my own computer....SO I have a really cute photo of a wild lily for you folks, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow.  Sorry!

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annnnd more veg monitoring..

Another day at work....today I spent all day here:

completing our final veg transect (and therefore all of our spring veg monitoring for the year!) at one of the CTC projects.  HURRAY!  I will not miss veg monitoring, it involves lots of activities that really hurt your back, like sitting on the ground and cutting and sorting every scrap of plant life in a 2 by 2 foot plot.  This one below took me 2 hours

:

So yeah, pretty psyched to be done!

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eye spy

BUSTED!  I did lots of cool things today (camped out on some friends lawn in Kings Beach last night, we to the beach first thing in the morning and then to greenfest put on by the Sierra Green Business Council, followed by watching the world cup game at a bar with a million other loud and rowdy fans, went to a craft fair on the way home and even did my laundry!)but I didn't take any pictures during any of it...sooooooooo heres a last minute picture of my eyeball.

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Suzy Lake

This morning Reyna and I hiked up to Suzy Lake in the Desolation Wilderness.  It was a beautiful hike to a beautiful lake that was a lot more secluded than Lake Tahoe.  The best part?  We packed in Reyna's inflatable raft and small hand pump and floated around in the lake on a little boat!

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Beetroot Hummus

Its been a while since I posted  recipe and today didn't turn out anything like I had hoped it would, so I did what I always do when something doesn't go my way, or I'm unhappy, or stressed, or bored, or happy, or excited, or disappointed, or thrilled, or whatever, and I cooked.  I bought some beets at the farmers market on Tuesday and was going to make my award winning roasted veggies (they really did win an award once, but I have since lost that recipe and made up a new one because its really only about the spices with roasted veggies, all the rest is easy.  Well, the spices are easy too...but I digress.  Anyway I opted out of the roasted vegetables because that feels more like a fall food so I scanned the web for beet recipes and found this little gem for Beetroot Hummus.  I've never made hummus before so I figured I would give it a go.  I did a few things differently from the recipe, first, I didn't measure the beets or the chickpeas, so my ratio could be way off, but it looked good to me.  Second, I used canned chickpeas so as to skip the soaking them overnight step, and also because I already had them.  Oh and one more thing, I don't have a blender or a food processor, so I used a little electric mixer that I picked up at a thrift store, sorta like you would to make mashed potatoes.  Lessons learned: Beets are much tougher than potatoes and don't "mash" quite so easily, and also, hold a plate or towel over the bowl while mixing unless you want your kitchen, clothes, and face to be speckled pink (aprons also highly recommended).  So mine came out slightly chunkier than traditional hummus, and also a rather alarmingly bright magenta color, but it was still pretty tasty none the less.  Some photos:

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