Week Two Down!

Monday night, and am now winding down from five days of planting.  They rhythm is set, the mud has begun to dry, and this afternoon, my planting buddy, Linh, and I were transplanted to a new piece. What does this mean? A lot.  All this week, and most of last week, we were in a piece that had straw grass up to our eyes...if not higher at times.  It's one extra thing to struggle against in the land.  Suddenly, planting a tree becomes an incredible feat. My hands....scratched, scraped, poked, and stabbed, now look like a dogs chew toy!
Today, I broke down, and decided to plant with gloves on.  Well....fingerless gloves. I have to say, though resistant to the idea, I've come around quite quickly to accepting a little bit of padding between me and the elements.
Our new piece is almost a dream. It's flat (in comparison to the endless hills from the previous piece. See picture below). There is little straw grass and what grass there is, comes up to the shins. The one downside, the land is pretty dry, with clay soils, which means a lot of extra work goes into digging holes. This can also result in a lot of added stress on the wrists, resulting in tendonitis.  Already, a handful of planters are battling with creaking wrists. Nearing the end of the day, my shovel arm was definitely feeling the force of the hard ground.  Thank goodness we have a day of rest.
The wildlife out here is amazing.  Yesterday, I shared my land with a soaring red tail hawk.  Linh was back in town sick, so I was thankful to have my new hawk friend to keep me company. I noticed today, the first sprouting leaves on the aspens.  Spring is finally coming to the north here, and I came across my first wild flower.  I am not sure what it was exactly, but the flower head was globular, with pink outsides, and a pale yellow inside.  Very neat.  I kicked myself for not having my camera on hand to capture it.  A very strange looking flower, but such a treat to discover.  The land is fairly barren of life, minus the straw and an occasional patch of turf. As the day wound to a close, a few of us were walking up the road to our van, when just in front of us, came a herd of elk, running though the forest.  There must have been around 12 of them, in full speed.  Phenomenal to be so close! Then, if that isn't enough wildlife in one day, along the side of the road, just hanging out in a marsh, stood a big ole moose, paying no mind to our big red van bumbling down the road.  I'd say a good way to end the day...with nature constantly revealing special creatures when least expected.
Next week, is supposed to be our last week here in Hinton, before traveling north to Grand Prairie.  Because we're behind in numbers, we'll be working a 6 day shift.  This should be interesting. Five days is already pretty hard on the body, so we'll see how each of us are holding up come the evening of day 6!  Other than having a chew toy for a hand, all is going well out there, no major injuries or complaints to speak of.  What I have come to realize is that planting is the same old as usual.  Though a new company, it is still planting.  The game is to try and beat my numbers from the day before.  I am staying fairly consistent, increasing slowly yet steadily.  Today I reached 5.5 boxes.  Each box contains 315 trees making the grand total for today 1732.5.  My highest numbers yet for this contract.  Hopefully, next week I will continue to increase.  My goal is at least 6 boxes each day.  What makes it tricky with numbers is for every tree we are also to plant a tea bag of fertilizer. I've gotten into a routine now, but it certainly slows down the flow. Fingers crossed that the weather continues to work in our favour, without too much rain to bring back the mud, but without too much wind, where we're almost blowing away!