On morning, I arrived early to Holden Arboretum and notices bees on nearly all of the plants surrounding the entrance to the Science Research Center. They were damp from condensation, and motionless from the cold, but attempting to warm themselves in the morning sun.
Saturday, Allison and I participated in a competition/fundraiser at our Atlanta CrossFit gym, Fitness Battalion. During the competition, heats of three competitors raced for number of reps in a workout called ‘Fight Gone Bad’, which is a reference to a tiring three rounds of a boxing fight. The workout includes five exercises, each done for one minute , with one minute of rest between three rounds of the five exercises: wall balls, sumo-deadlift-high-pulls, box jumps, push presses, and rowing. Allison trained hard the past few weeks and it paid off; she won an $85 certificate for a local catering service and the women’s competition with 329 reps. All Heart, All Day.
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Many of the litter samples I brought to Holden Arboretum were not sufficiently ground for Elemental Analysis, so I used a coffee grinder to break up tough litter material (like cattail and Thalia), and then sub-sampled that material to grind in small red-capped vials with metal beads in them. Here are a few photographs of the process.
Some standards and polar extractives used to determine total phenolic content in litter samples.
