Jonathan Shimizu: Week 5 Recap

It was supposed to rain this week. It did not rain. It was hot and humid instead. Michael and I were hoping for rain this past week so we wouldn’t be suffering in the field but we were disappointed when the sun was out all day, every day. Additionally, the cicadas finally decided to show up and our final plot was full of them. On some trees, it became very difficult to identify cankers because the cicadas resembled small cankers from a distance. However, we finished rating butternuts in our final plot, bringing our total up to about 2,000 trees. This plot seemed much healthier than our previous two, so we’re excited to see if there is any reason why this could be. Next week Michael and I are going to collect our samples and start analyzing them in the lab. We’re so close to the end of the program, even though it seems like we’re only halfway through!

To close out week 5, we went to King’s Island over the weekend! I finally rode the Diamondback and found out they had just built an even taller and faster rollercoaster, the Orion. The Orion was a fun ride, but the long wait wasn’t really worth it. However, I still had a lot of fun at King’s Island and can’t wait to see what’s in store next week!