2/14 Happy Valentine's Day

We woke up at 5:30 this morning and began moving our things over to the cottage. We finished in time to have breakfast in our new digs. The cottage is quite nice for the four of us. There are two bedrooms, each with a bunk bed and a single, a bathroom and a small kitchen. We made our lunches and since it was sprinkling, Katie thought that we should finish the garden enclosures that we started the other day. We were joined by a young man named Dan who is a Fisheries and Wildlife person from Washington state. He and his wife, a nurse, are taking a year off after the birth of their son who is now 4 months old. Some of us worked on replacing the chicken wire fence with a hardier pig-proof fence and then attached the chicken wire to the top to prevent the deer from jumping over. The rest of us weeded the second garden – it was really full of that horrible grass that has long underground runners. The day turned out to be a nice one despite the rainy start and we got almost all of the weeds – there is just one corner left to do. We got back to the cottage and took turns in the shower and then sat on the porch and enjoyed cheese and crackers until it was time for dinner. The Cornell students arrived in four vans. Apparently they are in Hawaii for a semester. They are taking a course called An Environment Study of the Hawaiian Islands. They will be here just a few days and then will move on. Dinner prep was very easy tonight has be had leftovers from the party. We did the dishes and then drove up the road to the U S Air Force tracking dome. It is part of the NASA system – all fenced in, but you supposedly you can see bats flying in the lights. Well, we waited quite a while and saw only one bat. A guard came out and asked us to move our car out of in front of the gate which we did and after waiting a while longer with no more bat sightings we decided to give up as it was starting to get quite chilly. We came back and settled into bed with our books ready to enjoy our first night in the cottage.