Wildlife, Art and Adventure in the Winter

School has started back up and I am enjoying it except for biochemistry. However, I can find joy because I have a bunch of projects I am doing out at Creekside like the bobcat research continued.

I finally even got a picture of it on trail camera. (It is also good to be back at work after a month off for Christmas break because I need  money, haha don't we all!) I am also going to be using Sherman traps to do a small mammal study of what there is as a food source for the bobcats and see where more of the critters are to determine where the bobcats might be. 

I found some more tracks but they were in sandy soil so I was unable to make successful casts. Along with that we have forest inventory that will be starting soon, eBird monitoring I do once a week and I have also been monitoring a beaver out there (I named him Beavis) and I am pretty sure he died😔. I will be featured in a Logan Co. news paper here probably next week talking about my bobcat research and hopefully drumming up some interest in the local community. 

In two weeks I have an art gallery show- not all to myself but I will be with a group of local artists for Lincoln Art Institute. Parker is being a wonderful provider and making me some amazing frames to display the paintings in. I am taking my "prism swamp" and "deer couple" up there to display and hopefully sell. 

Prism Swamp

Deer Couple

Since you have heard from me I have got a wedding dress, we picked a venue out in the mountains of Kentucky, picked a wedding date (!!!) its April 20, 2022, I have been applying for internships like crazy and I got a very fantastic remote work one for 6 months with the National Deer Association as their conservation intern and then I got the most amazing opportunity to work as an archery educator/naturalist out in the Black Hills of South Dakota over Summer. Parker will also be working very close to me, and they accommodate married couples very well. From there I have no idea where we will be- I need to finish school and Parker will be getting a full time job so we will go wherever that takes us. I really want to get a masters degree somewhere for wildlife biology where I can radio collar animals and do really interesting research on what their movements and behaviors are like. Whatever college I end up at will be a new experience for me that I am very ready for and also very excited to move around and see new places with with my new husband.

I will be doing a lot of traveling this year in 2022, Kentucky, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. I am very excited to go on lots of adventures with Parker and begin out life together. We have only known each other less than a year but I have no hesitation, no worry, no nervousness-nothing about marrying him. Only joy and excitement because I do believe he is the one God had for me all along. 

Over the weekend I went to see Parker and we went to the UK hockey game with all of his awesome friends and even his brother and his fiancée were up from Texas to join in the fun. It ended up being pretty packed and we were never able to get in to see the game so we all went to his friends house and watched hockey there, it was a very good time. The next day we had hot browns which is a dish Kentucky is famous for and it is so good- especially if you like cheese. 

Parker is on his way here as I write this and we have some fun plans. We are going to Creekside and checking cameras, GPS plots for the trees, and hiking the trails. I also need to take more pictures of me doing the science stuff for the documentation of the study. We are also working on the frames he made me which look absolutely amazing and a shadow box style. I have to take them to the gallery this Thursday. Tomorrow we are probably hiking around my property and then we have a bridal expo to go to that has some great door prizes. 

To end off this blog I chose the verse:  "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." -Romans 8:38-39 There has been so many times lately I have needed to rely on God- especially sorting out the Summer internship where I can still be with Parker. My grandma asked me today if I was still close with God and I told her, "Oh, Ganny. If I wasn't and didn't pray all the time I don't know how my life would be going but it wouldn't be this good. Truth is I have a lot of faith, that God loves me and wants to bless me and he has and he will keep on doing it." Our God is like a very loving father- he wants to give his children the best things and he will keep doing it especially when we draw the attention to it is not by our works but by God's. 

💜Nichole