Such a hot day today! Time for swimming!

I didn't take a picture of my breakfast this morning. It wasn't anything too special, just soft boiled eggs. Also, when you get the cooked egg out of the shell, it doesn't look too appetizing... It tastes very good though!

Today wasn't too full of excitement. For the morning Andreas, Millie, and I spent it researching and doing some literature work. My research was all about fluorescein isothiocyanate. It sounds extremely scientific I know... It's actually used in staining pollen, proteins, and many other microscopic objects. Because I have pollen in my Canavalia sp., I now need to see if it is viable and will germinate. Last week we made the sucrose that I will use tomorrow on the pollen to see if it will germinate. Since we already have the solution of that made up, I didn't need to do any research about that. I needed to do research on the staining solution and find a recipe to create it. This took some time because after finding a recipe, I have to make sure the lab has all the chemicals. They have very many, but not all of them out there. It was difficult finding recipes because there are so many I found! Also, some mixtures won't work on pollen grains. I have to make sure that the stain will stick to the pollen.

I think it's so hilarious. Two of Dr. Jean's favorite stains are Brilliant Green and Brilliant Blue. I think she just loves the way they both sound! I agree! They both have a good ring to it I think! Also, she's done a lot of work with them both, and they work well, so why not love them?

By the time I had enough recipes for the stains we will use tomorrow, it was time for lunch! I get so hungry by the time lunch comes around! Or I just love injera that much... I think it's a mix of both! When I first tried injera, I wasn't a huge fan of it, but now I'm totally hooked! They serve you 3 different sauces for lunch. One is always very spicy, the other moderate, and then they usually serve you some cooked vegetables that is in a somewhat spicy sauce as well. I love how you don't eat it with silverware. You use the injera to eat it all! By the time I'm done eating, my hands are a mess though...

My injera lunch today! And a bread roll...

The afternoon was full of action and movement though! Dr. Jean was finally done with all her meetings for the day, so she spent the rest of the work day with us! First, she came into the herbarium and asked us what all we had done today and if we researched anything interesting. After that, she took us out to the greenhouses to go look at Millie's and Andreas' plants that are flowering. Millie showed Dr. Jean the flowers she had pollinated last week and Dr. Jean told her a few other ways she could pollinate if her way didn't work. Hopefully it does work though! Millie used a pair of forceps to open the petals up, used her fine paintbrush to gather pollen from the anthers, opened up a different flower, and brushed the pollen from the paintbrush onto that flower's anthers. That's usually how it's done, so hopefully it was effective and worked! 

We then took a peek at Andreas' plant and saw that there were tiny seed pods hanging off of it! This was great news! Now a question arose though... If there are seed pods, why won't it reproduce? It's been growing for over 5 years, and hasn't ever reproduced. Maybe it's because the pods fall off too early. Maybe it's because the seeds never mature. There are many possibilities. Andreas thought it might be because of the environment, so we decided to alter it's environmental conditions. He said this species usually grows in tropical areas with a high humidity level. Ethiopia barely has any humidity. It's very dry. To fix this, we placed a large cube around it covered with plastic to keep all the moisture inside and around the plant. He will check on it and water it every day as well as spray water on the inside of the plastic 3 times every day in order to keep it moist and humid for the plant. 

As for my Canavalia sp.... Someone brought me more samples of the flowers today so I'll be able to work with them tomorrow and test them! Out of the 9 samples I tested last week, only 4 of them had pollen on them, so hopefully at least some of these samples have pollen on the anthers as well. I guess I'll find out tomorrow! If there isn't any pollen on these samples, I'll probably have to go back to the start. On the flowers with pollen I found last week, there wasn't very much, and they were very small grains, so I'm hoping these samples have more pollen and in larger grains.

Enough about work! Because it was so nice outside, Millie and I decided it would be a great day for some swimming! (Also because everyone is saying how the Rainy Season is about to start and we didn't know how many more days of swimming we have left...) We decided to take advantage of this beautiful day! It was funny though... As soon as we got to the pool, the sun went behind the clouds and never really came back out... Of course! The water was still very warm so it was great to swim in. We swam for almost an hour, and then decided to head back to our rooms for some dinner, emailing, and blogging!

Sorry there aren't many pictures on this one! I didn't really have my phone on me much today to take any!