Hello My final weeks in Canada were spent, crawling on my hands and knees, hands in the dirt, pulling weeds out of the ground in order to help my sister out with her PhD research. On the plus side - her project was located in the Okanagan valley, a very beautiful part of British Columbia. The landscape is similar to that of Central Otago, NZ (including the numerous vineyards). It's also the fruit basket of western Canada - loads of fruit. The weed we were pulling out was Knapweed (Centaurea diffusa), an agricultural weed in Canada, that probably slipped its way in with alfalfa sprouts. Andrea was actually more interested in the three introduced biological control agents of the knapweed (two that fed on the seed heads, and one that fed on the roots) and the
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