It’s Thanksgiving week, everyone went home to spend time with their families and eat a good homemade meal, with mashed potatos, turkey and pies! While I, stayed here. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving back in Uruguay, and the long journey back home wasn’t worth it for just a week – plus, I’m going home for winter break so I just have to wait two more weeks. Nevertheless, my time time here, alone in campus, hasn’t been bad. I visited some surrounding towns, a friend invited me to spend Thanksgiving day at her house, so I got to eat some delicious food, and with so many free time I also explored Burlington and UVM more.
Since I live on central campus, I don’t often visit the Redstone side. However, I heard there was a nice path to walk nearby, so I decided to check it out yesterday. Though, I don’t think I ended up where I was supposed to. As I was walking, I saw a patch of tall trees and vegetation, so I ventured in. Suddenly, I found myself on a golf course. I kept walking around and saw some big houses – which seemed out of place to me in a golf club. And as it got darker and colder, I decided to just pick a spot there for my phenology assignment.
The main differences I noticed between this area and my phenology spot were:
- This area is much more planar compared to the significant inclination present in my phenology spot.
- There were no rocks present, neither a body of water nearby.
- White pines and northern Red Oaks composed most of the overstory.
- There was much more understory – mostly conformed by Buckthorn – than overstory.
I found some new species here too. A tall northern White Cedar and Black raspberry. Additionally, I discovered a dead branch infected with fungi, which, I just thought looked interesting. According to the internet, it belongs to the Auriculariaceae family.
In response to Honorable Harvest, I left, what I think is, a really hard shelled walnut that I found back at Rock point. It was just sitting in my dorm, so I thought I would return it to its natural envirionment.