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

Fredericton- the final stretch

We made it to New Brunswick!
Our crew merged with another small one this week for our trip down to Fredricton. We left at 6 in the morning on Wednesday all crammed into 3 trucks with our stuff in the back! It was a 5 hour drive but seemed like a lot less for some reason, must have been all the snacks!
The funniest part of the drive was crossing the border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, literally the minute we left Nova Scotia the skies cleared right up and when we looked behind us there was a wall of fog showing the border of the two provinces! It was so silly.

After the drive we dropped our stuff off at the hostel, grabbed a bite to eat, then headed out to the plot and planted until 6. Boy is it ever hot and buggy out here! Out here we're on a schedule of 6 days of planting then 1 day off. This week was different since the company doesn't want us to get tired out we planted for 4 days and got today off. We're planting regular days still but starting next week we're going to be leaving earlier and staying out for almost 10-11 hours a day. I'm pretty nervous to work 6 eleven hour days in a row but since it's the last stretch of planting we're just going to keep pushing forward.

There are a lot more moose out here than there are in Nova Scotia and every morning on our way to the site I search the treelines desperately in hopes of seeing one and I still haven't seen one yet! THEN yesterday two of the other trucks saw 2!! and I missed it! I was furious. completely.
Nick and I did see a really big bear paw print though.. you could even see the claws where they dug into the mud. sooooo cool, but kind of creepy because you know there out there in the forest with you...

that's about all that's been happening over here! The hostel is a lot of fun, after work all we do is make dinner and hang out with everyone! Hopefully we'll make it through the next couple weeks and be able to come home to all you wonderful people in one piece!

Heather and Nick

Big news and big cities

Good evening everyone!
We're sorry it has taken us so long to update everyone,
Although this past week wasn't the most exciting of times we did have some adventures and get some big news!

Last week was probably one of the best weeks so far! The site we had was being finished up and even though we had to deal with some slow days we managed to keep our numbers at a decent level and had a lot of fun doing it! A bunch of our crew members decided to quit for some silly reason but the ones that are left are real troopers! We had some great bonding time as a crew and are all prepped and ready for our trip to New Brunswick!

We started hearing rumors about the NB trip happening earlier than expected and on Monday got confirmation that we will in fact be leaving TOMORROW.
We got today off in preparation for the 5 hour drive tomorrow. We're driving up to our hostel in Fredericton, leaving our bags there and going out to plant for the day! We're pretty excited but at the same time very upset that we have to leave our home here in Antigonish.

Last week the white truck broke down the same day the driver quit! Fortunately (sort of) our crew was small enough to all fit into one truck together while Snow White (the truck) was being fixed. THEN NICK INHERITED THE TRUCK!
It was a glorious day in Nick's life, maybe even one of the best, when he got to drive the truck down those dirt roads and through all those big puddles. He says the little boy in him was just lovin' it! He gets to drive to New Brunswick tomorrow too which he is pretty excited about.
Funnily, the other truck (Quicksilver) broke down on Monday and unfortunately has been retired. She was doing so well and made it so far! We were afraid she was going to be out of time within the first week so making it 5 weeks was preeeeeetty good!

Finally this past weekend Nick's dad came up and we road tripped it out to Halifax to meet him with Aly, Jake and Robyn. After a very fun drive we pulled up to the funniest, tackiest little guest house there ever was! It was called the Fountain view guest house and was complete with a stuffed deer head in the front hallway, and the two and a half star rating framed and displayed proudly by the door! It was super charming and made for some good laughs and was in a prime location! Tim brought us around the whole of Halifax and it was great!

The very first thing we ended up doing was going out for a drink at Maxwell's plum and Nick and I discovered 1 1/2 lbs of mussels for $4.97! MAN I love the east coast. I would move out here on the sole basis of how cheap sea food is... and how much I love the ocean too...

We walked the harbour, saw Theodore tugboat, stopped in at the museum and learned a heck of a lot about the Halifax explosion and the sinking of the Titanic. We also walked up Citadel hill and made it to Point Pleasant to look out over the ocean. On our way out of town we stopped by the graveyard and saw the Titanic graves which was a little freaky...
We also went to Peggy's cove and climbed all over the rocks on our way back to Antigonish.
All in all a phenomenal weekend. It was so good to get out of Antigonish and see a big city again! The harbour was really really cool, watching all the shipping boats, fishing boats, sailboats and even canoers enjoying the water! Loved it! We also made it out to the farmers market which was soooo super cool, they had so many vendors and there was so much neat stuff going on.

Nicks birthday was great too! Sunday night we made it home and had a great big dinner of homemade hamburgers, sweet potato fries and ice cream cake. Also, since we got today off we were able to go out to the pub and watch the hockey game with our tree-planting buddies on Monday night and stay out all the way until 12!

We'll be working a lot longer hours in NB but will try to update as much as possible!
Miss you all and we'll be home in no time!
Heather and Nick

What a weak week...

Hey everybody!

Week 4 was preeeeeeettty weak. 2 finishing days means nooo money.
Dang.
We finally got a new site on Thursday and although it is still 2 extra cents (meaning baaad land) we've been able to get good numbers on it! Nick especially! He did extremely well on Thursday number wise. He did almost pass out and throw up though because he "forgot" to eat lunch.

Luckily it felt like someone pressed fast forward this week and it was the weekend in no time flat!
This Friday we celebrated my 20th birthday! Lobster, potato salad, and corn on the cob followed up by brownie banana splits made up the best dinner I have ever had in my entire life. We went out and saw the Hangover 2 at the tiny theater in town and just hung out afterwards. All in all a very successful birthday.
Today was a beautiful day so we spent alot of it outside playing cards and hanging out. Aly and Jake made it down to the water today meaning they were in two different oceans within the week! Pretty cool if you ask me..

I figured we needed to spice up the blog a little bit this week and since I still have no exciting stories to tell you all hopefully these pictures will distract you!

Our glove tans are coming in nicely!Some planting bags and Nicks "special" shovelQuicksilver- one of our tough trucks!Trays of trees- Nick and I can usually put in 8-10 trays a day- each one has approximately 278 trees in it!This is my current land lots of brush piles to climb over!

*For more pictures see my facebook album!*

Love,
Nick and Heather

Week 3: bummerrrrr

Hello friends and family!

So this week wasn't exactly the best week we've ever had treeplanting. It did go by pretty quickly which was super duper nice but we seemed to all have a slower week.
A lot of the days everyone on the crew had to carry in trays, and 4 out of 5 days looked like they were going to be finishing days (meaning we finish up a site) but then turned out not to be. That was pretty unfortunate because it just meant we didn't really push ourselves to get good numbers because we thought we were finishing up. All in all it was a messed up week with only one really good day slapped in the middle.

Wednesday was fun. Nick and I were able to get another 10 that day and it was beautiful out! Unfortunately the bugs have been out and were pretty terrible that day but the whole crew decided to go for a short (and freezing) dip in a nearby lake at the end of the day!

Jake and Aly are still in Panama and will be home on Tuesday! It actually felt more like tree-planting without them here just because that is how it was last year! We do miss them a bunch though. We do so much more with them here! Last weekend we sat on our butts the whole time and watched a lot of cash cab. This weekend we managed to finally get out with the crew and have a potluck. It was preeeeetty fun! We had also planned on seeing Pirates of the Caribbean sometime this weekend but I guess the theater is so small that they aren't getting it for a while! Pretty unfortunate.

Still not too much has happened, we did see a baby bunny out on the plot though! Very cute!
We're apparently moving to a new site soon too, but it apparently isn't the greatest land wise.. not looking forward to it.
We're hoping this week will pass quickly again and we'll be able to have yet another uneventful weekend. Essentially we're holding out for the weekend when Nick's dad is going to come down and hangout! His visit will not only mark Nick's birthday and be super fun, but it's also the half way point of the expected season! It's hard to believe its only two weeks away!

We miss you all but we will be home sooner than you know!
Love,
Nick and Heather

counted wrong...still 10 weeks!

Another week of ex-tree-me planting has gone by!
Our bodies still aren't quite used to the whole hard labour routine but it's alright, made it through the first full week of planting and we aren't totally burnt out so that's a good sign!

This week was a little bit more eventful but not by much..
The weather here is HORRIBLE, for the most part at least. It's been raining here almost constantly and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were the absolute coldest and wettest days Nick and I have ever experienced tree-planting!
It was awful.
It did help me discover that the raincoat I brought with me is not actually a raincoat- just a windbreaker. So guess who was soaked through to the bone for the majority of this week!
Nick didn't have proper rain gear either so after 3 days of intense rain we decided to go out and get rain suits. Although it hasn't rained like that again yet, they're great!
The rain did push Nick and I to plant super fast on Wednesday meaning we both hit our personal bests of 10 trays! (That's quite a bit!)
It also meant we had to do a load of laundry every night though... that was kind of unfortunate.

Nick and I have gotten to plant together quite a bit this week which means we've been singing a lot of Disney... I think we're going to watch Mulan today...

Also, Jake and Aly are doing phenomenally and are getting better and better every day! They just left for Panama today though and we miss them already! Hopefully this week will go by quickly and we'll have them back here with us soon.

Out on the sites this week some funny stuff happened, a van got stuck in the mud, one of our trucks batteries died and the tree truck got stuck in the middle of the road too! Because of all the rain, the roads on our site are AWFUL. So bumpy and muddy and just terrible, our foreman has been doing a great job of navigating them safely though.
One day this week we ran out of trees so the next day we were told not to meet until 8! It was great! We were able to sleep in until 7:15 instead of dragging ourselves out of bed at 5:15! Although it was a shorter day we were scared we weren't going to be able to plant as much as we normally would but we managed to get a good number regardless.

Our crew is awesome and they're so much fun to plant with. Hopefully we'll all be able to hangout on weekends as the season progresses. We also got news that the New Brunswick trip is happening again this year meaning that for the last two weeks of the season Nick and I will be going out to New Brunswick to stay in a hostel with a bunch of planters and spend 10 hour days planting trees out there. We're a little nervous but still excited, plus once we hit that trip it means we're home free!
It already feels like we've been here forever and I can't believe we still have 10 weeks of planting ahead of us.

Nick and I don't have much to do this weekend so if anyone has any ideas of something fun to do let us know!
We might try writing a rap now...

Hope everything is well in Ontario!
Miss everyone,
Heather and Nick

One week down...9 to go!

FIRST WEEK COMPLETE

although it was only three days... we're all very tired.
and sore.
and hungry all the time.

Jake and Aly are doing phenomenally! Incredible even! They're kickin' butt for their first week on the job.

Nick and I are also getting personal bests in the first few days! It's exciting but I don't know if I'll be able to keep this up for 9 more weeks!
Nothing too exciting has happened yet, a couple snakes, a salamander, that's about it.


Just about 10 minutes ago though I was sitting on the couch and a TICK WAS WALKING UP MY LEG. AAAAH- I am now very paranoid that they're going to be all over me... ugghhhhhh lime disease.....

and GUESS WHAT
Aly has mad blisters.... just glad it wasn't me this year ;) !

In preparation...

Hello family and friends!

Nick and I have started preparing to go tree-planting again in Nova Scotia, Antigonish.
This is round two for us and this year we have the pleasure of Aly and Jake's company! We're expecting it to be a great summer full of aching muscles and big bug bites!
We have spread ourselves out across my living room floor and have been going over and over our list. We haven't quite packed up yet but are planning on doing so very soon. Hopefully we'll be able to fit into 3 suitcases this time instead of 5...


and of course, Nick is taking a rest while I do all the work!

We also did our very first weigh-in:
Heather- 130 lbs
Nick- 152 lbs
Keep these numbers in mind! We'll weigh again when we return!

We decided that paint-balling might be a good way to prepare so we went in yesterday!


It's sufficient to say that Nick kicked my butt...and now I have many welts to go along with my soon to be aching muscles...


Keep an eye out for updates and funny stories!
If the blogs stop coming, assume we've been eaten by coyotes...
We will miss you all very much! Have a good summer!

Nick and Heather