*smoke comes out ears*
Jul. 2nd, 2011 17:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillSo the Chronicle ran an article this week about the Berkeley sick plant clinic. Oh boy, thought I; we had been hoping for a few more people, but having an article on the front page of Wednesday's Datebook section is just asking for it. Meanwhile, our lead pathologist is on a trip to China at the moment, so I'm all we've got for pathology. I braced for impact as best I could.
It started heavy and stayed that way. I gave up on a tally almost immediately, but Alice was running logistics and managed to keep one between new arrivals; it shows about 44 people came in. The heaviest month I can recall in recent years was 15, and it usually runs closer to 9. I shunted as many people as I could to the entomologists, bless Emma and Nick both; Emma also took a bunch of basic pathology questions alongside the bug queries. It was Nick who jumpstarted my response on the last customer's problem, because my brain was starting to drip out my ears. Fortunately, control measures for leaf spot diseases have been drilled into me for so many years now I can recite them in my sleep, so all it took was his mention that it was probably "that leaf spot disease that shows up on ornamental pears all the time" for me to snap into focus and start talking about Entomosporium and sanitation measures. Though I admit, I had never seen it on fruiting quince before.
I think I did well in my "trial by fire", as Emma calls it, though it felt like a three-hour practical exam. Looking over my responses, they all seem reasonable. It was a day of bad news (oak root fungus and viruses) and good news (edema and cause for hope in a maple with Verticillium). We may have saved a fifty-year-old cherry tree, and taught a lot more people about codling moth. Not a bad morning at all, and worth the eyestrain and the sense that my brain had been pulped. Next time maybe there will be enough of a break for me to go to the bathroom and eat breakfast. :)
For now: don't wanna think for a while.
It started heavy and stayed that way. I gave up on a tally almost immediately, but Alice was running logistics and managed to keep one between new arrivals; it shows about 44 people came in. The heaviest month I can recall in recent years was 15, and it usually runs closer to 9. I shunted as many people as I could to the entomologists, bless Emma and Nick both; Emma also took a bunch of basic pathology questions alongside the bug queries. It was Nick who jumpstarted my response on the last customer's problem, because my brain was starting to drip out my ears. Fortunately, control measures for leaf spot diseases have been drilled into me for so many years now I can recite them in my sleep, so all it took was his mention that it was probably "that leaf spot disease that shows up on ornamental pears all the time" for me to snap into focus and start talking about Entomosporium and sanitation measures. Though I admit, I had never seen it on fruiting quince before.
I think I did well in my "trial by fire", as Emma calls it, though it felt like a three-hour practical exam. Looking over my responses, they all seem reasonable. It was a day of bad news (oak root fungus and viruses) and good news (edema and cause for hope in a maple with Verticillium). We may have saved a fifty-year-old cherry tree, and taught a lot more people about codling moth. Not a bad morning at all, and worth the eyestrain and the sense that my brain had been pulped. Next time maybe there will be enough of a break for me to go to the bathroom and eat breakfast. :)
For now: don't wanna think for a while.
