To celebrate the start of the new academic year we went apple picking with the lab at Eplegaarden, a local orchard in Fitchburg, WI. What with the lab composition changing substantially, this was also a nice chance for everyone to get to know each other in an informal setting: this fall we have two new incoming graduate students (Matt & Elise) and we hired four new undergraduate research assistants (Tali, Sarah, Ann & Teresa). Furthermore, our PI’s Maryellen and Mark just came back to Madison after a year-long sabbatical at Stanford. A final change to the lab is that Yaling Hsiao successfully defended her PhD-thesis in August and moved to Oxford, where she is investigating how children learn to read as a post-doc in Kate Nation’s lab.
We ‘plukked’ more ‘epler’ than we could ever eat and learned some Norwegian while doing so. Besides apples, there was also a raspberry plot, and those of us who went in there came out with pink hands and faces, because who can pick raspberries without eating some? All in all, we enjoyed a lovely morning in the beautiful Wisconsin countryside, especially what with the weather being so favorable (over 60 degrees!). To top it all off, next Monday’s lab meeting featured delicious home-made apple bread.
