June is a popular month for conferences this year. The Missouri Master Gardener conference was this weekend, and I did an hour-long presentation on Plastics/Microplastics on Saturday!

The ‘room’ was a curtained off corner of a ballroom! I arrived early since I was using my own Mac for the slideshow and I wanted to make sure it connected with the AV system in the room. The connection was easy (HDMI) but the set up was awkward with a table for the laptop against the same wall as the screen. I managed.

There were twelve people in the audience….they all seemed to be very engaged and the 20 minutes I had reserved for questions and discussion was filled with great interactions and afterward I got 2 master naturalists requests (one wanting to get on the core training contact list and another wanted to transition from another chapter to the Springfield one)….and then there was person that wants to write an article about my topic for a Missouri journal. It was an hour well spent! It occurred to me that the charts I prepared for this talk will just be a baseline that I will tweak for all my subsequent presentations; there is new information coming out all the time and I will always add charts to focus on the aspects of microplastics that would be of most interest to the particular audience (in this case it was gardeners).

The only handout I had was my ‘reduce your microplastic exposure’ mind map and several people picked one up as the presentation time ended. I had put some blank paper in with the mind map pages too…and am glad I did – since that is how I got contact info for follow-up!

This is my first hour long presentation in a long time. I did a few shorter ones in Maryland, but they were usually associated with a hike (searching for skunk cabbage is one I remember) or an activity (creating Zentangle tiles). It was a skill that I used frequently during my career…but that frequency ended 14 years ago. Based on the way I felt during the presentation and reaction from the audience, it is a skill I have easily refreshed.

April 2024 has been even more full of little celebrations than usual; it was challenging to choose the top 10!

Traveling with my daughter. Taking a road trip to Dallas (a familiar trek) is quite different when my daughter to with me. We start the driving a bit later and, this time, we stopped in Joplin on the way home for lunch. I celebrated the time in the car…the great conversation.

The life of a cousin. It was bittersweet to go to the funeral of a cousin that was younger than me…but it was clearly a celebration of her life.

20 puzzles for $2 each. The Friends of the Library book sale in my county included puzzles and I celebrated getting 20 of them for my dad and the other residents at his assisted living group home. I also celebrated a return to volunteering - helping with the book sale.

iPhone 15 Pro Max. Getting a new phone is always cause to celebrate….even though I started out a little anxious that it would a little challenging to go from my old Android phone to an iPhone; it was a pleasant surprise to realize it was pretty easy. The only downside was the reduced functionality of the Windows phone link app for text messages; that issue was resolved as soon as I transitioned to a Mac later in the month.

MacBook Air 15”. More new technology I am celebrating; it only took about 24 hours for me to become a fan of the Mac after using Intel-based machines since the 1980s.

Irises. The plants bloomed all at once. In one bed the stalks were too tall for them to remain standing to I cut them to enjoy indoors – celebrated the buds opening all along the stems.

14 ducklings. Seeing Mom Mallard with her ducklings is a great celebration of spring.

Solar Eclipse. So glad we made the effort to position ourselves to see a 2nd solar eclipse (the 1st for me was in 2017). It’s a phenomenon rare enough to be a celebration.