Cranberries et al.

It feels like I'm in Alaska!


Cranberry bogs are surreal!  By cranberry bogs, I really mean black spruce forests with sphagnum so deep you want to sleep on it (but for the mosquitoes).  The Ericaceous shrubs out here as an understory make sense.  I haven't taken any pH readings, but I'm sure its low (high acidity = low pH).  The heath family is an acid loving family and its Virginia members include Rhododendron, Blueberries (the vaccinium corombosum from a previous post plus another), mountain laurel, wild azalea, and probably one or two others I've missed.

Out here in the Interior of Alaska, there's Vaccinium uliginosum (blueberry), V. vitis-idea, V. oxycoccus (cranberry), Ledum groenlandicum, L. decumbens (Laborador tea), Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, and A. rubra (see below for common name).  So that's a lot of names, BUT, some of them are really cool!

Stunted Picea (likely P. mariana) in a bog

Kinnikinnick is the common name for Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (sometimes hard to tell from V. vitis-idea).  First off, I'm not sure how Kinnikinnick is any easier to remember than Arctostaphylos uva ursi.  It's also one of many "bear-berries" which would make sense with the "ursi" in its name.  Kind of like the constellation Ursa Major (big bear), but there are several bear berries up here.  Likely because bear like to eat just about any of the berries up here....

Anyways, so Arctostaphylos.  It sounds like a winged dinosaur and with the specific epithat being uva-ursi it sounds like a winged dinosaur resembling a bear.  A rather impressive name for the little plant with super-cute impressed leaves!



So out here there are decidous conifers (like Larix larcina or Tamarack), evergreen conifers (Picea Mariana or black spruce), evergreen decidouous shrubs such as the cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idea), and deciduous broadleaves such as birch and alder (Betchula papyrifera or paper-bark birch, B. nanna, B. glandulosa, Alnus tenuifolia and A. crispa).

Picea mariana

Populus tremuloides

Larix larcina

Ledum groenlandicum

Not all broad-leaves lose their leaves in the winter time and not all conifers keep theirs in the winter.  All of these different types of growth strategies are up here!

There's so much more I want to write about.  The insulating moss, the neat epiphyte, the frogs up here, the permafrost, the many wildlife signs, tussock-hopping, and just more cool pictures!  But this will be a little bit for now.  I'll put up a few neat ecology stories with pictures soon!  My transfer cable is at work, but I'll have some extra exciting pictures soon!

Almost posting from Alaska.

I created this blog to keep up with the folks back in Virginia et al. while not in the contiguous 48.  I've been up for about 2 weeks and taken about 250+ pictures of which none have thus far made it into this blog.  I have good reasoning.  I managed to fall into some of the more unfortunate pitfalls of moving across the country without being able to vet landlords.

I'll admit it, I was so busy and blinded by completing my thesis that I'm not sure if I even showered or ate as often as I should.  In Feb/March I ordered a plane ticket and forgot it/left it in my e-mail until 4 days beforehand.  I found a bicycle guy and told him I'd call when I got to Alaska, saved his e-mail and left it until I left.  I worked with the other techs and found a room to rent off Craig's list, called her when she was actually awake (whoops...time difference...), confirmed I'd be one of the new tenants from the ad. off Craigslist and then went back to my thesis.

If you're wondering if my thesis seemed to take almost every waking minute the answer is yes.  If you've never been a graduate student trying to get a manuscript to a committee and then organize them all together at the same time, the phrase "herding cats" always gets thrown in there.  My committee is wonderful, supportive, and helpful.  My graduate experience has been meaningful, fulfilling, and positive.  My manuscript is just shy of 100 pages, all of which require a specific format and my data couldn't even be completed until March.  So I was writing my first book in a month.  As I mentioned, I was living, eating, breathing, crying, and sweating over this document.  I was not, in fact, as worried as I should have been about the particulars of Alaska.  I wasn't nervous, or excited, or even thinking about this state.  I was too myopic and focused on worrying about things I felt were within my control on my thesis.  So....back to living arrangements...

I was picked up by one of my new roommates at the airport (the one that has a truck) on May 29 at 2 am and said "Hi" to my landlords on May 29 at 9am.  They mention they want checks before the first of the month and when I try to give them one they give it back to me and said it wasn't the full amount.  I have them write out the breakdown of the price.  The next day and we sit down and discuss it.  The advertisement said $860 for 2 bedrooms, which we planned on putting 4 people in.  Expecting 860/4 = $280, come to find out she decided the price would be higher.  I explained that the price she wanted per person did not in fact split the rooms as was discussed via phone by my roommate.  So I have already unpacked and don't have a place otherwise, so I eat the $400 (including electric) she charges because I figure I should have had it in writing.  I could have packed my bags back up and couch surfed but I didn't want to back out and stick my roommates with my portion of the month's rent either.  I tell the landlord that night that this wasn't the price I was expecting and that I will have to rework my budget and talk to my husband.

Two days later I tell them I can't afford this place, it's not the price I was expecting (and advertised) and I'll be out before the month is through (I've already paid for the month).  I get told that I should have told them the price wasn't what we were expecting and "we could have talked about it".  ....I had already told them that the price was higher than I thought it would be according to the add.  

So there's the typical roommate drama.  Their dogs eat my sweet potatoes and they don't pay me back (after offering).  They drink all the milk and ask us to buy more (still while owing me for the groceries the dogs ate).  The dogs shit on the carpet and we wake up to it smell that gags us all the way upstairs in a room with the door closed.  The dogs shit in the garage and its left there for > 18 hours knowingly by them.  They babysit yelling kids and the landlords have fights while my roommate tries to sleep during the day.  This is after being told that my roommate was working night birding hours (midnight to 8).  Really, this is the more petty, annoying, uncomfortable stuff.

I'm more pissed about the bait and switch they performed getting us up there and changing the price.  On the one hand there's no written agreement.  On the other, there's no written agreement so I don't have to stay.  I told them 3 days after I moved in that I wasn't staying past the end of the month.

Fast forward 2 weeks and we find a cabin to rent.  We can pay $400 total a month for a dry cabin to then split 4 ways.  Most places not hooked into city water, where the pipes are insulated as they travel into the house, are dry cabins.  Outhouse and no running sink water.  So we carry water in and poop outside.  Work has a shower and lockers; that's how common dry cabins are.

We tell our landlords that we're going to check out a cabin and we're likely to be all moving out at the end of the month and it's just that what we found is cheaper.  One roommate goes out to work, one goes with me to check out a garage sale in the neighborhood, and one is finishing some lasagna prep.  Not when we're all together, not when it's two of us (including me), but only when we left one alone with them in the house did the lady of the house corner my roommate and attempt to lay into her.  Keyword attempted 

When I had my discussion about moving out, we didn't have a place secure and I didn't want the rest of my roommates to have to deal with me laying some truth on the crazy-bitch and still having to live there for 2-4 more weeks.  We found a cabin willing to take us.  She didn't have to bite her tongue nearly as hard.  I have yet to bring this blog into more of a personal realm and way more hesitant to use this language in something my family will read.  But calling this woman a crazy-bitch is leaving it as polite as I possibly can.  

The lady catches the roommate I went to the garage sale with after we get back and lets us know that our other roommate got into it with her and that she wanted to square us away to what happened before it gets twisted after she leaves.  She delves away from reality into topics that any sane person would realize weren't even brought up in the conversation she just had.  She tells me my roommate tried to blame it all on me, but that she, the landlord, didn't have a problem with me even though my roommate tried to sell me out.  I am the oldest person in that house.  I had even given my roommates permission to say I was the reason they had to leave b/c rent would have gone up without me.  Even with that permission to "sell me out" as needed, she never went there.  She didn't need to.  Reality seems to be something our landlord might have some difficulty with.

Her husband, by the way, just sits there the entire time they were talking not saying a word.  If he felt his 5-month pregnant wife was being verbally attacked he would have stepped in.  Pretty sure he just knows by now she's crazy.   It's a bit draining to go into the details of their conversation as relayed, but the short of it is that she's nutso and we're moving out.  That night they have a shouting match around midnight and discuss fidelity and some name calling (including sasquasch) and then I hear their truck leave.

So, whenever I'm home I haven't had either the energy, proper working internet connection, or ability to concentrate due to Mr. and Mrs. "ignorant trash" as some confidants have described after parts of our story have been relayed.
 
To my cohorts in Virginia I'm supposed to be helping create graphs for a conference, thank you for your patience with not only a 4-hour time difference, but also for my tense demeanor at times when home as well as my delay in providing the synopsis of such a large document (my manuscript).  I know my thesis is very large to sift through when all you want is 2 or 3 graphs.

To my family wanting pictures and updates (who aren't on facebook) I'll have pictures up as I can.  The new cabin has an undulating floor, a brand new hole in the floor at the bottom of the stairs (the landlord's foot fell through as she was showing us the cabin), mosquito swarms like a cool summer evening squared, a living room with a view straight into the doorless outhouse, and no internet.  It will feel more like a home, and be more comfortable than where I am living now.  It looks like Alaska and has a certain charm I'll have to show in pictures.  So I will have more energy, but I'll have to bike a few (5 or 6 miles) to get internet.  I'll update with pictures and cool Alaska stories soon!  There's tons of neat events we've gone to avoiding being in the house and I've seen some neat ecology already!

Cooler stories and updates with actual pictures to come soon!