It's been a while since I posted - been rather busy.
My fantastic team of short term visitors have almost all left :(  Richard, Findi and Marianna have been wonderful students and good fun to have around! I hope they've learnt what they'd hoped  during their time with me! 

This week has also been my first proper experience of the struggle of being a new academic without a team of minions (I mean students and post-docs) to help out with harvests. The last two days I harvested a maize experiment entirely alone. No need to queue the violins but it was definitely not as fun as with a team of people working and joking around! Also surprisingly slow. Having worked with a team of plant physiologists at UQ on a previous experiment (and helping out with their harvests back in time), I definitely underestimated the time commitment for dong it alone! Meanwhile I'm still expected to submit project proposals for PhD studentships, support a post doc applying for a fellowship to join my lab, plan the next grant proposal and carry on the other experiments I also have running, not to mention the administrative duties that I'm expected (and I agreed) to do.  
Complaint??  not really.  I love collecting data and planning the next steps. I'm loving doing the physiology with new technology or modified techniques which I have the flexibility to do thanks to my fellowship. And I have great people applying to join my lab so it's just a matter of time. But I do sympathise with other early career academics out there! 

Hang in there brethren...you're not alone in the struggle!  

In the meantime here are a few new pics from the glasshouse!
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