#“it was only a 3lb axe!” said my wildlifer friend who was also there

[streamlass]

I keep ending up surrounded by Plant People. I am a Rock and Water person, professionally a Soil Person, and yet--Plant People. I suspect it's a matter of contagion. Let me explain:

My mom has a horticulture degree. My dad considered a career in plant breeding; two of his cousins (and one of their spouses) went into that field.

So by the time I got to college, I was already well-versed in the Language of the Plant People. I did not want to be a Plant Person, however. Plants stab you. They try to give you rashes. They make you sneeze, & they get in the way of that lovely rock exposure you're looking at.

Since I went to a college that didn't really have an ag program, I thought I was in the clear. I went into natural resources, however, and forgot to reckon with a specific variety of Plant Person: the Forester. And between friends, classmates, field camp crewmates, and dorm neighbors, I spent an inordinate amount of time for a hydrologist* learning about Trees. This is why I have a thorough loathing of oak ID--I never did figure out the Apparently Obvious Difference between black and red and pin oaks.

*hydrologists are inclined to think of trees as giant straws stuck into the groundwater, redistributing it to the clouds

(I did NOT go to the bar with the foresters. They played hammerschlagen with AXES. I'm rather attached to my toes, and would prefer they all remain attached to me.)

Then I ran off to grad school. In geology. Nothing but nice, reasonable rocks from here on out, right?

WRONG. There are forestry students at my field site. The soils lab is in the biology building (bah). Half the geology department thinks I'm actually a botanist. I almost date one of them. (The fact that I regularly ask for plant IDs doesn't help. If it's a pretty Western Cordilleran flower and I have no idea what it is, it's probably Phacelia.)

And NOW, I work in agriculture. I was going to focus on water contamination, but somehow the crops people have talked me into figuring out how to model the darn things** and I spend way too much of my summers slowly dying of heat in the middle of the maize.

**crop modelers are ALSO inclined to think of crops as large straws stuck into the groundwater, though they do account for nutrients

To top it all off, one of my good friends here is a legume geneticist.

Suffice to say:

There is no escape from the Plant People! AAAAAAAAA!!!