Welcome to 2015

Wow we have been busy! Or maybe not busy just exhausted from working and skiing so much! Here is our latest video- celebrities, holidays and broken limbs.

Stay well,
Heather and Nick

EEEEquipment and bears!

Hello! Here is a good video if you miss the Nick and Heather dynamic at all.
Showin' off our new equipment and talkin' bears.

Stay well,
Heather and Nick

Journey to Whistler Blackcomb

We have made it! Please enjoy our very first video blog from Whistler, British Columbia.
Sorry about the shotty editing and the poor filming... I'll try to get better!
Also, Nick doesn't like dancing on camera so I had to catch him sneakily :P
Also also, I had to remove the song from the video for copyright reasons. It was "our road trip song" and it is a really good one so it is also shared here!

Stay Well friends,
Heather and Nick

Another milestone come ang gone...

Hello friends,

I just realized I haven't updated this little guy in a long while, and there is so much to tell! I'll just get right to it! (it's going to be a long one! sorry dudes!)

First off, working at the nursery for the past two weeks simply flew right by! Before we knew it our last day was wrapping up. We transplanted the whole time which means we stand in front of a table like metal frame with a tray of tiny trees on it as well as a tray of large stock plugs (see facebook for pictures). We would poke a hole in each plug, drop three-four little nerd-like fertilizer balls into the hole, then plant a tiny tree into it as long as it had a good root system. Working there definitely gave Nick and I a whole new outlook on treeplanting just because of the amount of work that goes into each individual tree. Originally we went in with a lady at 8 and worked until 4 but our first day we met a couple girls who ended up living right up the street and managed to start getting rides in with them at 6 so we could be done at 2.
The 3 girls we drove with and Nick and I became good friends so it was always a fun drive into work!
The days often went by quickly with an odd slow one but since you work in pairs on trays Nick and I were able to just talk or listen to our i-pods to pass the time. We managed to get anywhere between 33 and 39 trays done a day which I think is pretty decent...
We would clock in and out with a little machine and get 30 minutes for lunch, MUCH more structured than treeplanting!
It was mostly hot and sunny for the first week and since we got to wear shorts it was awesome! Last week we weren't so lucky and it rained a couple days and was extremely cold another. On our last day it was raining so much we got moved off the hill (where we transplant) into one of the greenhouses to weed/fix up large stock trays. It was fun though because we got to hangout with all our friends and just goof around.
We only managed to see our treeplanting friends a couple times in the past two weeks because most of them have been away either at home or planting in New Brunswick again (a small crew made up of foremans and long time planters got sent up to finish the sites). We did manage to do a couple things though! Attended a potluck, played some volleyball and even went to wing night!
Robyn and her sister Natalie were hosting the open mic/wing night at the pub last week so we went to FINALLY see Robyn sing (after living with her for 5 months and never hearing it). I ended up getting up on stage and singing Tik Tok by Ke$ha acoustically with Robyn and her sister.. it was super fun and I loved it!
This past weekend was so much fun and it started off with a night of hot tubbing with our nursery friends. The next day we got to go with Robyn to her family's house in New Glasgow where we then moved on to the cottage that their extended family was renting for a couple weeks (one of her uncles is getting married this weekend!). We spent the next couple days with the Alcorn family listening to wonderful music, eating fantastic food and relaxin' to the maxim! (just a side note- every single one of the Alcorns is extremely talented in music... not a single exception) We went to the beach just down the road from the cottage on Sunday, a gorgeous sunny day of 30 degrees! Nick and I took many naps, tried to swim in the freezing cold ocean and played with a jellyfish!
We eventually made it back to our home in Antigonish and yesterday did nothing but take more naps and go out for a wonderful lunch at Gabrio's, the fancy place in town. We went to celebrate the end of our work this summer just like we did last year. Man the food is good there! and affordable as long as you go for lunch.. unless you get dessert ;)
Our good friend Kristen came back from P.E.I yesterday and still had her rental car so she took us and a couple of her other friends to the "watering hole"
She had been a couple of weeks before with her friends and told us about this nice whirlpool that simply drags you around in a circle and was a lot of fun... since it rained a bunch this week the river had turned into a dangerous series of rapids with the whirlpool overflowing with enough power to drag you under!
of course... we went in anyways.
and had a blast! only had a couple close calls with death, like when Nick kept getting pulled under by the pull of the waterfall and had to be pulled out by Devin, and when I lost my footing and fell into the water which proceeded to drag me down and across rocks backwards, one of which I almost knocked my head on, and had to be saved by Kyla who was fortunately in the perfect place for saving rogue bodies!
It was extremely terrifying but a heck of a lot of fun and I'm glad we all lived to tell the tale!
Afterwards we went down to Jimtown beach which has a lagoon behind the beach that drains into the ocean. We spent some time walking around in the lagoon-ish area and skipping rocks. We also saw a crab! It was scuttling along sideways and unfortunately none of us were brave enough to try and pick it up.. We finished off the night with a trip to DQ for some ice cream. It was the perfect end to a perfect working vacation out here in Nova Scotia!
Today we're spending all day packing up and cleaning the house in preparation for the arrival of my family! I'm so excited to see them!
Today is the beginning of our journey home! See you all in two weeks.
Love,
Nick and Heather

The end is near!

Hey friends!

I am pleased to announce that planting is OVER! Yes! the moment we have all been waiting for happened this past Thursday!
It was all a little confusing last week as our original crew was finishing up on Tuesday. We did have the chance however to plant the season out with another crew. It was only two extra days so we went for it. We planted for a guy we call "Stabbs" and our experience on his crew was pretty good! The last day we got land that had been trenched properly so we were really excited- trenched land is land that has had a machine go over it to make trenches that you can easily plant in- buuuuuuut it had rained a LOT the night before and instead of trenches... we had lakes... it was not enjoyable in the least. However it probably made us appreciate the end even more.
Once we got back to the hostel after planting on Thursday we got showered up, packed all our stuff and took off to McDonalds for a quick bite before hitting the road back to Antigonish. While we were enjoying our lovely meal in the parking lot Stabbs remembered that he had a snake in a lunch box in the back of the truck- he often stuck snakes in his crews lunch bags so they would get bitten when they went to get a snack. He then proceeded to take the snake into the McDonalds in a brown bag and release it into the boys bathroom. VERY funny, I just hope there were no serious consequences!
We moved on and took off to Antigonish arriving around 1:30 am. In unpacking the back of the truck we discovered we were missing a bag with a comforter and pillow in it... it must have flown off on the highway! The next morning we still managed to wake up at a reasonable time of around 9:30 and I started it off by playing Bruno Mars' "Today I swear I'm not doing anything" because that was exactly what I was planning on doing. We just hungout outside until evening came around and it was time to head over to the fireworks at St FX.
Nick, Aaron, Krysten and myself went together and enjoyed the best fireworks display I have ever seen. (see facebook for video!)
The rest of the weekend was full of beach hangouts, naps in the sunshine, end of season crew dinner and party as well as some swimming in the creek behind our house!

On the weekend we also finalized the plans for working in the nursery for the next two weeks. Its a heck of a lot less than treeplanting but at least it will keep us busy and earning money until my parents come out to get us. The road trip plans have also been finalized which we are all very excited about! Nick and I can't wait to be on vacation and be on our way home to see everyone!
Since the plans are mostly confirmed it's safe to say we'll be coming home a week earlier than expected on the 1st of August!

Until then we're transplanting at the nursery- moving lot's of tiny tiny trees to large stock plugs- it's not terrible, especially since Nick and I are working together on the same trays. We'll take some pictures and make sure you can all have a better understanding of what we're doing now.

In other news-
Nick has been pushing pieces of stick out of his leg for the past 2.5 weeks. In Freddy he got poked by a stick that went through his boot and pants into his leg. He then whined all night and all day about his tiny tiny cut. The tiny cut turned out to have a big chunk of stick in it that he scratched out a week later. THEN it turned out there was even more stick in it which he just pulled out this weekend!
and
I managed to receive and maintain the position as top girl planter for the company this year! whoop whoop! It does feel pretty good that's for sure!

I apologize for the long long LONG update! we'll see everyone in about a month!
Love and miss you all!
Nick and Heather

ps check out facebook for a ton of pictures and videos recently added!

INTERNET FAILURE- finally a new update!

WHERE MY PARTY PEOPLE AT??
sorry it's been so long since we've updated! so much has happened since we updated last meaning I will probably forget to mention half of it since there is so much to talk about!

FIRST OFF
- JAKE AND ALY ARE GONE! :'( they left us on Friday and headed back to Ontario to go to camp. We miss them very much already and can't wait to visit them!
we did manage to go out dancing with them before they left though and it was very fun! Their whole crew went back to Antigonish for the weekend so they were 2 of the only ones from the other crew left so they came out with ours and planted for the day on one of our sites.
It was very fun to have them around and I can't believe they're already gone.

It's kind of upsetting that they're gone to camp as well because our work is ending this week! we figured on having 9-10 weeks of work and so far we're only getting about 8ish. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last day of planting unless we can manage to get ourselves onto another crew for the next couple days and finish instead on Thursday. We're also hoping to get some work in the nursery for a couple weeks but we won't know if it's possible until around Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully we can or else we'll have to sit around Antigonish for 3 weeks waiting for the fam to road trip up here, or we'll have to catch a plane home early! don't get your hopes up though we don't know whats going to happen!

Since we've been in Fredricton we've started like 5 different sites and have only finished 2 of them. That means tomorrow is a day of running around to 3 unfinished sites pounding in trees as hard as we can! It should be fun though since it is our crews last day together- hopefully we can grab some good pictures! Today we had a one day site that we managed to close up with almost the perfect amount of trees! It was AWESOME! It felt really good to be able to complete it as a crew together. plus it was some of the best land we've had all season! (finally...) There were NO rocks! it was beautiful. The ground just closed up around the trees wonderfully.

So far Fredricton has been super cool since all the planters are together we've managed to just hangout alot and get to know everyone really well. We've done some pretty fun stuff actually... like last night a bunch of us went out and played volleyball at some sand courts. It was one of the best nights of this summer so far! It's also nice to have some girls up here at the hostel! I was the only one for about a week until Aly came up with a couple other girls on her crew. We were then joined by a couple more last week and it is safe to say they're all awesome! One of the girls has a bunch of friendship bracelet materials and I've got one started that I'm pretty excited about. A bunch of us also made it out to a really nice lake yesterday and although it was pretty gloomy and the water was cold, Nick made it in the water with a bunch of other people while I took a nap on a towel. All in all Freddy has been very fun and we're sad to be leaving so soon! Although not so sad to be able to sleep in!

One last exciting thing to mention! This Saturday we went out planting and the night before Nick, Aaron and myself managed to get the majority of the crew hyped up to plant until 2 instead of 12. Once we got out there however, it was rainy and terrible outside and a huge thunderstorm broke out. Planting in thunder and lightning... a tad scary... it was pretty funny watching people running out of the plot though! Luckily no one got hurt and we managed to get a couple trays in in between the lightning storms... we then finished the trays on that site and even though it was only 11:30 and were supposed to move to another site, we gave up and went home. So much for planting until 2! lol everyone was pretty happy about not having to plant in the storm though.

ALSO we finally got our sweet pub crawl treeplanting shirts! THEY ARE SO SICK. we'll post pictures of them after the pub crawl happening on saturday? potentially? keep an eye out!

Anyways, it's getting late and tomorrow is a big day for our crew! Lot's of photoshoots and not so many trees to plant..
Good night everyone!
Miss you all!
Nick and Heather

FINALLY something exciting!

hellooooo!
this is just a quick update with some of the exciting stuff that's happened here this week!

-scary but exciting none the less-
the truck behind us was passing a car on the highway and another car came right out from a blind corner and didn't stop at the stop sign almost causing a head on collision! It was so scary to see happening behind us but luckily our driver reacted super fast and managed to avoid the car! He did however flatten a highway sign... I tried to convince everyone to take it with us but no one went for that...

Jake and Aly made it up to Fredericton yesterday with a new crew and they're doing REALLY awesome! and really enjoying their new foreman and crew! It's super sweet, hopefully they'll actually get some good days to make up for the junk they went through last week!

Luckily they have decided to let us stop working everyday at 4 instead of planting 6-6, it means a couple less trays but since we're working 6 days a week with only 1 day off we should make more anyways.
Nick and I are line-planting basically from now on because we both kind of feel done with the whole treeplanting thing hahah, classic end of the season "I wanna go home" feeling I guess.

Still looking out for a moose! we're heading out to a new site tomorrow so we'll have a whole new set of tree lines to search!
Hopefully we'll have much more exciting news to update!
Miss you guys and be home soon!
Heather and Nick