today, I'm in love with Edouard

or at least his effects. He slid on past south of us, and the wings of rain just didn't quite reach out this far, but it's CLOUDY. And cool! 9:30 in the morning and still under 80°. AAaaaaahhhhh.

Yesterday I went out with the benthic invertebrate monitoring crew for the first time in months. I need to get to the notebook and chalk up 3.5 hours collecting, as well as 2.5 hours working on the poster last week.

John and Adelaide and I went to Burning Tree and Woodrow. Burning Tree had a skinny little groove of a channel between the pools but no actual flow. Woodrow had a modest flow and a real riffle. Also I saw SIX turtles.

We have returned to approximately our original, pre-Todd, collecting protocol. We make three 1-sq-ft sweeps of the benthos, in a pool, up the bank, and in a riffle. We mingle all three in a white pan and then pick on-site. An occasional pebble or seed may get tossed in, if we can't quite tell if it's an animal or not, but essentially it's a clean sample to take back to the lab. We're meeting next Tuesday at 9 to do the ID.