awesome

On Tuesday we went to the Silverbell Mountains (Arizona) to botanize. And at the moment all the annuals are flowering. Fantastic!

I’m in Arizona to collaborate with colleagues from Tucson. Last time I was here I realized that the Grand Canyon is actually not that far away, but it was still too far for a day trip. So, this time around I decided to spend a few days in Northern Arizona at the Canyon.

I spent two days walking along the southern Rim. The Rim could be done quicker of course, and walking down into the Canyon would have been nice to get a better impression of the size of the Canyon. And much less people are going down as it is a pretty intensive hike. With the snow and icy paths it was also bit sketchy and gravity seems to work extremely well at the Grand Canyon.

Yesterday, I spent a day in the rain around Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon looking at red rocks and lots of interesting plants. I was not expecting to see Norwegian standard waterfalls in the desert.

Yesterday, we went to a bird cliff, where we will put up a few sites to collect leaves for measuring traits, carbon flux and hopefully fly with drones. The bird cliffs, or the area below the cliffs are nutrient rich because of the bird droppings. We want to compare the plants growing under the bird cliffs to control plots that are not under a bird cliff.

So, far we do not see a large change in species composition, but the plants by the bird cliff were taller.

Working in the office has the advantage that you meet colleagues and can discuss things. Often small problems can be solved very quickly when you can talk to the responsible person instead of writing several emails forth and back. But there is also a lot of distraction when I am at the office. Friends want to talk (nothing wrong with that), students come by to ask questions (also nothing wrong with that). But all of these little distractions add up. It’s hard to focus on something if you are interrupted, at least for me.

Therefore, I sometimes like to change my office location. Some days I work a couple of hours at home before going to work, because it let’s me focus on a particular thing: I can read a paper, read an introduction or write a paragraph in a manuscript. And sometimes I move my office further away: Håvoll, Switzerland. Also, I work concentrated for a few hours and then get to do fun stuff as well.

At the moment I am in Switzerland for a month to see my family and focus on work „in peace“. And a few weeks ago I was a week in Håvoll with: