Me: *plants test plots of species untried in our experimental application just to see if they'd even grow in these conditions*

The Weather: DROUGHT

Guess who's out here watching sprinklers go back and forth and back and forth and...

The rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) in my little front yard prairie has gotten so big! Love this quirky plant

Also pictured: swamp marigold (Bidens aristosa), which has been a rockstar at re-seeding itself every year since I used it in my PhD project

Seeds have been in the fridge cold-stratifying for a while, but now they're in envelopes and ready to go in the cone seeder next week! Let's see if they actually germinate in the atypical conditions I'm asking them to handle 🤞
Doing a pilot study is so exciting!

Happy #WorldBeeDay to all the fuzzy ladies who pollinate the world's plants. #GirlsRunTheWorld

I found this bumblebee (Eastern or Two-Spot I think) working hard on some rattlesnake master at Nachusa Grasslands.

Oh that's fun. The US Dept of Education website on Hispanic-Serving Institutions looks like this...

After the 1st chemo option was over, we gave her a break from meds, but she still gets scans done regularly.

And now, 400 days after that terrible phone call, Doah is not only still with us, but none of her scans have shown metastasis yet, and she has so much zest for life!

We don't deserve dogs.

Absolutely heartbroken, we tried to figure out what to do. We have raised this dog for basically her entire life. She's a large breed mix, and at the time she was just over 13 years old, which is already incredible.

But we weren't ready to give up, and neither was she.

In January of 2024, while playing in the snow with my dog, Doah, we inadvertently discovered a mass on her vulva. It started bleeding when she fell down, and I couldn't get the bleeding to stop. I rushed her to the ER vet, where they found the mass and confirmed my worst fear: probably cancer.

If you see this, post something orange.

Flame skimmer (Libellula saturata)

Had a wonderful time meeting folks and presenting my preliminary results at the NEWSS meeting in Annapolis last week!

Oh hello, what is THIS NONSENSE???

Luckily it appears the default setting is "no," but what a crazy dystopia we are living in. They want to train AI to write and make art because that's easy and possible to do, but what it creates is still garbage to a large extent.

A+ holiday gift from our scientific supplies Stockroom Team 😂

Gave my first presentation on (preliminary) results from my postdoc work today at an internal symposium at Penn State! Had a great time talking about cover crops with folks 🌿

I don't have words to adequately express how I felt when I saw this product in the store

Introduction Post!

Hi 👋 I'm Dr. Sheryl Hosler, currently a postdoc at Penn State synthesizing data from a 12yr study to figure out which cover crops mixtures do the best at providing multiple ecosystem services in farm fields.

I love #scicomm, restoration, urban ecology, dung beetles, and bees!