Friday, June 21, 2013

Welcome to Summer!

Today is the first day of the glorious season we call summer (for those of you in the southern hemisphere, happy winter!). This is by far my favourite season of the year: heat, humidity, and sun. You know that feeling when it's 30 or 35 degrees (Celsius) and 80-100% humidity? When you walk outside and you instantly start sweating just from the effort you need to put into standing? I LOVE that feeling. If I felt that every day for the rest of my life, I would be a happy camper.

Last night I helped out with an event on campus that was an arboretum tour. An arboretum is kind of like a living museum; trees are catalogued as "exhibits", and each exhibit has a label. The label on the tree has the tree's common name, the Latin name, the family that the tree belongs to, where the tree is native to, and the tree's number in the arboretum's catalogue. All of the planted trees on campus are part of the arboretum, and there has been a marked shift in tree planting from the 1930s and 1940s (mostly Austrian pine and Norway maple) to now (mostly native species like tulip trees, hop trees, native dogwoods, and sugar maple). There are almost 2500 catalogued trees on campus, representing somewhere near 350 species. Not bad for a University campus! I had a really good time leading my tour last night and it seems like the participants enjoyed themselves, too. I should become a professional arboretum tour guide! :)

Enjoy the new summer blog colours! Here's to hoping for warm, sunny weather. And happy first wedding anniversary to my cousin Sharon and her husband Cavan!

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