My Weekend Off

This week I worked 12 days in a row; the last weekend for one job and the week days at my internship. I have learned so much and gotten more confidence from this experience and truly I don't mind working so much since I'm the kind of person who always needs something to do. I can identify a lot of plants now (native and non-native) and have been doing projects related to invasive removal and mapping.

Butterweed in a bottomland forest habitat

But, this weekend was fun and a really nice break to actually have time for things I wanted to do. On Saturday morning I went to the student orientation and registration at my next college and got my email and such set up and picked out some classes for my conservation biology degree. I graduated my community college with 86 credits so this is a little complicated since I had taken a few extra classes so I might have to take a few classes that aren't biology to keep a full-time status at my next college. 

Pen and ink art I did inspired by microscope images I saw at college

After that I went to see Aaron and we took is boat out on the river since it is flooded and went pretty far up river on a sort of wildlife tour. There is a few bald eagle nests, one had 2 juveniles in it and their parent was not far away. I figured it would be really cool to make an Illinois wildlife documentary since we really see so much wildlife all the time. We saw turtles, a water snake, a king fisher and a baltimore oriole. 

Oriole in my backyard

Then, Aaron came to my house today since I had a lot of things I needed to do. I have a pretty sweet garden that is going to be a blog sometime. I needed to hoe out some weeds and put straw down since I am kind of behind on the work right now. It looks great but I only had enough straw for about 1/3 of the garden. My grandpa came up and talked to us and joked around. Then we went to my grandma's, my cousin was there also and it was fun taking about what fun we had as little kids when my grandma baby sat for us. We went and got pizza, brought it home and ate on the back patio where we are putting in a koi pond and listened and watched the birds at the feeder. We are gonna end the evening by watching the next episode of The Chosen. 

Me in my garden last year, looks super weedy but it wasn't too bad. The straw should help a lot.

It was really nice to just relax and have fun this weekend. My verse is "She is energetic and strong, a hard worker." Proverbs 31:17 I say that a lot as I go about my day to remind me that God will give me the strength to get through hard days.  

💜Nichole