phenology friday

So yeah. Yesterday's post was totally an April Fools thing. haha. As if I could quit my monkey blog - I love blogging! I think that this is one of the best ways for me to make lasting memories and it makes me happy that I'll always be able to come back and read about my different adventures - even after I go back to canada. Plus this way, when my friends and family ask me "omg so how is costa rica?!", I can just tell them to read the blog and I don't have to repeat myself a thousand times. :)

So, back to the business of blogging. Today we did phenology. I think the PHD student was impressed cause I got my trees all done quickly (usually it takes a couple full days). I love phenology days. I get to listen to music on my ipod while I walk, and I get to visit trails that I don't have a chance to go to very often on monkey days. Its cool to monitor the trees and to see how they are growing and changing each month. It makes me feel all in-tune with nature n stuff.

One of the best trees in the forest is the guanacaste tree. They get gigantic and they look really cool when they are fully mature. See? Before the british spider monkey chick left to go home, she showed me a guanacaste seed that she had found. They were so pretty that from that point on I always looked on the ground for fallen seeds when I came across a large guanacaste. Weeks and weeks I searched to no avail. There were no seeds to be found.

Well today I hit the jackpot. I was walking in my favorite part of the forest and I noticed a big guanacaste tree that had started to drop its fruits to the ground. I had always seen the fruits high up in the trees but hadn't gotten the chance to examine one up close. When I picked it up, I realized that it was a giant seed pod! (lightbulb) I broke it open and out fell a whole bunch of beautiful guanacaste seeds! I collected a bunch of them and filled up my pocket. I have decided to take them home and make them into beads. Then I am going to make my good friend who is a jewelery designer help me put them into a pretty necklace. I'll even make one for her too. Neat huh? I have a bunch of seeds so if I can figure out some cool looking jewelry, I will give them to my peeps as gifts! Yay!!

That's all for now. tomorrow i'll write about either: sloania - an evil species of tree in the forest, using my binoculars to take close up photos, or another bee tree that I found today (well, wasp actually). Which would you like to hear about first?

xoxo
Dayna