Citizen Forester Field Training

This is what I was going to publish on the day the laptop started to die. In hindsight, it didn't really die, it just refused to open up because I was so low on memory. Since the laptop was wonky, I was not able to download the photos from my phone, so I did not lose them when the laptop went down. Here's what you missed.

Today was the field portion of the Citizen Forester training; it was at Nuʻuanu Valley Park. I was the first participant to arrive after Wai & Morgan; we got a few minutes to catch up. There were 20 people signed up for the morning session; I was somewhat surprised to find that only 3 of us were dressed for field work, but I guess I shouldn't have been. There was even one woman wearing a dress! Fortunately, we were in a park & not any place with anything taller than mowed lawn. 

The online data entry app.    

False kamani (Terminalia catappa).

Kamani (Calophyllum inophyllum).    

As you may have noticed in the Uber for wildlife posts, as I head up Nuʻuanu Valley, it is usually quite cloudy & occasionally drizzly. Today we had several periods with heavy showers. Many of the people not dressed for the field were wearing short sleeves, few had any sort of jacket or pullover. There were a number of people who were quite uncomfortable with the weather, but they stuck it out for the full 3 hours of training. Wai & Morgan cancelled the afternoon session since more of the same weather was predicted.

Panorama from L to R; looking northwesterly at tables in background where we met when it was drier.

Looking northeasterly towards Boy Scouts of America building.

 

At the end of the training, we were issued our Citizen Forester t-shirts. We now have to do 3 inventories with seasoned Citizen Foresters before we can be certified. We sign up through the Citizen Forester Program website. 

Front.

Back.

I did about a mile of walking today. We probably would have done a lot more walking around, looking at the various trees in the park, except that it was quite wet. Nuʻuanu Valley Park was originally the grounds surrounding Queen Emma's Summer Palace & numerous tree species from the Pacific region were planted here. I would like to go back at another time & check out the other species.

As we started the morning training I pulled out my clipboard to take notes. And discovered it was cracked almost in half. As I turned it over to see how bad it was it totally fell apart. I will need to find another clipboard!

Can't even try to repair it since I lost the spring for the clip.

As I was leaving Nu'uanu Valley Park, I saw a person with a death wish walking along the Pali Highway as it heads in to town. He was walking along the median between the 2 directions of traffic. I let the passengers in other vehicles call it in to law enforcement; I did not hear anything on the news later that night about a pedestrian accident on Pali Highway so it sounds like he was safely escorted off the highway.

I slept in this morning so I did not make a proothie this morning. Because I did not have the proothie, I decided to get lunch at Kokua Market. They have a barbecue on Saturday featuring meat products from Makana Provisions; I tried their Hapa Burger which is half beef & half venison. I would order this again.

The farther silver car is parked ... poorly.

Hapa Burger; it also comes with raw onions but I declined them.

Luna was released late this afternoon. She returned but is not being allowed around the house for a couple of weeks so she does not play too roughly while her stitches are healing. For now she will be confined to The Roommates' bedroom except for a brief walk to the kitchen at meal time.

For dinner I had an Andouille Chicken Sausage; I usually chop them up & make Red Beans & Rice but not tonight. I found out they are too hot for me to eat just plain; I gave the 3 other sausages from the package to DT since I have no plans to make Red Beans & Rice any time soon. Too much carbs!

Clockwise from left: Andouille Chicken Sausage, chipotle sauerkraut, & kalamata olives.

As I was trying to find links for Nuʻuanu Valley Park, I ran across my friend Jalna's blog again; we were classmates in high school. Jalna's blog is mainly about food; she posts recipes & product reviews. But she also does watercolors & has photos of her artwork on her site, which inspire me. Occasionally she includes a video of a painting in progress like the one below.

The Aix weather app said there would be rain all day in Honolulu; that was not quite accurate. It was more like heavy intermittent showers. Aix forecast even heavier rains all day for Kapa'au; I have no screenshots so I don't know if that happened. For Maysville, Aix forecast drizzles during the day turning to rain at night; again, I have no screen shots of what did happen.

Nā Koʻolau at 8:22 a.m.

Nuʻuanu Valley Park at 9:21 a.m.

There were 196 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 81,283. There were also 4 new deaths reported, increasing the death toll to 837; currently there are 3331 cases considered to be active. There are 143 patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19; 45 in the ICU & 33 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for Oʻahu is 117 with a positivity rate of 2.8%.

This was the evening, when I was working on the blog, that my laptop decided to no longer cooperate with me ignoring its warning about being low on memory. Most of the text had been completed but the photos had not been inserted so I lost anything that was not on my phone. Hope you still enjoyed this pared down version.