Planet Earth worm project part 1

So, I'm taking an online Planet Earth geography class and its pretty interesting so far!  We have to be part of the Great Lakes Worm Watch project and eventually collect and preserve worms, which I'm pretty excited about funnily enough.  We have to do 3 different plots  (13"x13") for the class which I've chosen around the yard.  I'm thinking (IF I am feeling ambitious) that maybe I'll go to the forest area near my house and see what I can find out there. We will see!

I'm going to learn all sorts of cool things so you might get some weird facts (I might as well, its something interesting to blog about and I'm pretty excited!!).  Like these two: first, did you know that worms are not a native species to the United States and that they actually can hurt the forest floor by being there and doing their thing?  And two, earthworms CAN live in water for many months because they "breathe" through their skin.  WEIRD!  I didn't think they could! Awesome!!

As part of the first part of this assignment we had to take pictures of us by our plots and turn them in.  Here are mine!  hehe...Here is plot 1, I'm calling it "north of house."

 Here is plot 2: garden corner.

 And plot 3: west field corner.

(Hopefully, you can also see that we have corn growing in the field this year!  We are so super excited about it!  Its probably about 6-8 inches tall now, I think, but I might be wrong.)

We had to get the longitude and latitude for the locations of our plots too, so I got to use iTouchmap.com and do it that way because I don't have a handheld GPS.  Man, this is really cool! (That, or I'm a super dork! But I'm happy either way!)

I remember when I was young that we would collect worms.  I'm not sure why, I'll find out and get back to you.  But we used to pour this liquid stuff on the ground and the worms would come right up and we'd grab them and put them in containers I think.  I think that's why this project is so fun, it reminds me of things in my childhood and I'm not squeamish about picking them up either. Whenever I find some I always grab them and give them to the chickens!
Anyway, I best be getting to bed.  Talk to you soon!
xoxo, C

Quick-ish update!

Hi Everyone!  Sorry its been really really long since I have posted anything....life has been really busy lately!!  

I started going to school again full time back in January, I took 5 classes for the spring semester and had a quick 2 week break in between.  I think I did pretty good, I got As and Bs, which is really nice, especially after being out of school for so long!!  Hopefully I can keep it up for the next 2 years.  I'm not sure if I told you, but I'm going to school for accounting!  Yay!...because its so exciting.  But I think it'll be a good move for me, hopefully, and if I decide to not do anything with accounting then at least I'll have a business degree and be able to do something with it.  :) I just started summer semester a couple of days ago and I am taking 3 classes (because you can only take 3 during the summer apparently-its only 10 weeks instead of 17, so they cram in a whole bunch of work in those weeks, so it kind of makes sense but kind of messes up my plan).  

I don't know if any of you know (which I think all of my family and some of my friends know), but we started a metal cut out business!  Yay!  The web site address is cochincreations.com and we are Facebook as Cochin Creations.  I put the new stuff we are making on Facebook, so that is more updated than the web site.  The web site also has some issues that I'm still trying to work through, but it'll work for now until I have time to play with it again!  I learned the css and html coding from a tutorial that I found on youtube and I got a free program where you can design web sites and publish them through it.  I started out using Adobe Dreamweaver, but it ended up costing money and my free trial ran out! So I got Microsoft Expression Web 4 and it has been working really well.  There is still a lot of stuff I don’t know how to do, so hopefully that will come with time.  But it shows our pictures and it shows what we can do, so it’ll work for now.  We have been doing the local farmer’s market and also a farmer’s market about 25 miles away.  One is Saturday mornings and the other is every other week on Sunday mornings.  This weekend we get to do both, so it won’t be much of a weekend! Ugh, but we’ve been doing pretty well and its kinda fun to see what you can come up with and be creative and everything!  We will see how things go as time goes on!  :)

Also!!  The sweet little chickens turned a year old the other day!!!  I can’t believe it!  I would have taken pictures, but the gnats out here have been just so bad that they hang out in their coop all day because they are so annoying!  I don’t blame them, I stay inside too and when the gnats are swarming around you when you are out there you kind of want to freak out and run away from them.  Yikes!  Yes…they are that annoying!!  Stupid gnats.  I can’t believe that they are one year old already!  We still have all 13, they are laying up a storm, happy as ever (I think).  Except I haven’t been letting them out out (so they can play in the yard and in my garden) for some reason, but I think with the gnats about they are okay with that. 

I’m afraid that is about it…hubby has been working hard and doing well I think…he’s been sent on a couple of business trips, which I think he enjoyed a little bit.  We had both of our birthdays and our 10 year anniversary last month!  I can’t believe we are as old as we are and have been married for 10 years!  Holy cow!!!  Also, I think I have decided not to grow a garden this year.  But I'm still slightly on the fence about it.  I want to grow some stuff, mostly for the chickens.  I don't know! 

I think that is about it…I’m not sure what else is new or interesting…I better get some homework done before work! 

Xoxo,

C