Greetings! My name is Julie Zundel. I grew up in Two Rivers (Alaska) and I now live in the Rosie Creek area (western part of Fairbanks near the Tanana river) with my two children and my husband.
I have always enjoyed learning about plants – I worked in a greenhouse for a while when I was younger – and I always try to grow flowers (sometimes fruit/vegetables) during the summer. We aren’t huge foragers, but my family likes to pick blueberries, raspberries and cranberries. Sometimes we will even make tea out of spruce tips and my children like to collect rose hips to eat.
In the winter I am a high school science teacher, so I hope I can utilize some of what I learn here in my own classes. As for my favorite plant…. that’s tough. As a kid I loved finding “lady slippers” in the woods and now my children love hunting for them too. I think their real name is the Calypso orchid (I only recently learned that Fairbanks had orchids and my “lady slippers” were actually orchids).
It has been nice reading everyone’s introductions! I look forward to the class.
Fortunately, we had an old microscope one of my kids received as a Christmas present, so hopefully I can put it to good use.
Welcome Julie,
sounds like you will have lots of opportunities to get out an about with your family and observe plants. I hope this class will be useful for you in your own classroom teaching. There are a number of assignments that lend themselves to adaptation in the K-12 classroom. I love the Calypso orchids too. I have one on our property, but I often go to the UAF ski trails near campus, where there are pure stands of them in the woods, so gorgeous.