Life of Megan: Disappearing into the Mountains

When are the leaves going to start changing down here?! With this beautiful fall weather I want to see orange, red, and yellow leaves - as much as I love green...I'm ready for some color!! Lately I've been sneaking off into nature for hours at a time and then coming back to reality. So yeah, life as a PlantPath Girl involves plants, diseases, basidiomycota, hikes, trees, squirrels, lots of running shoes, climbing gear, chalk, busted knuckles, and lot of food. Oh, and research. How could I forget that?! It's my life ya know!

Oh my lovely dearest project. How much I love waking up at 4:31am and driving 2.5 hours across the state to start working on you! How much I love husking 1000 ears of corn in a day and realizing I'm barely 10% of the way done! How much I love shelling, weighing, and testing your moisture content and then dropping the bag on the floor! Oh my lovely dearest project.

So yeah, lots of corn. If you don't quite understand how much corn I work with, you can just read my previous post: CORN CORN CORN! Anyone want to be some hired help for a few days?!

Goodbye city life - I need NATURE

Let's see...what else is PlantPath Girl up to? Umm...not studying because these classes are for babies. More like writing a research paper on Fusarium graminearum, the casual agent of Fusarium Head Blight (Scab) of wheat. I'm pretty much a professional on the epidemiology of FHB which is good because that is a small component of my research as well :) Basically, Fusarium graminearum wrecks havoc on the corn, wheat, barley, and oat crops every year. In the 1998 to 2000 epidemic, FHB caused over $2.7 BILLION in economic losses/damages. So yeah, it's kind of a big deal!

Today I have a field day in Rocky Mount with my PI Dr. Ron Heiniger. I'm just shadowing him and not giving talks. I want to see how he communicates with growers so I can be respected by the growers as well.