|
|
Today, a sadly diminished Team Echinacea faced the renewed bout of heat/humidity without Gina, Will, or our fearless leader Stuart. It felt strange to arrive at the Hjelm House and not to see Will sitting in his usual spot at the picnic table. Despite being in Chicago, Stuart had plenty prepared for us to do. We started off the day with demo rechecks at Staffanson, which went quickly and smoothly thanks to our thorough work there last week. Then, while Ali, Abby and Amy harvested heads at P2 (they got about 20!) and Danny worked on the computer to prepare our afternoon tasks, Matt and I took the truck out to do demo at the last of the smaller sites, and just as importantly, to teach me how to drive stick! Ali and I are both learning to drive manual transmission this summer, because once Danny and Amy move to Chicago, the truck will be our only mode of transportation. Luckily for us, Matt is a very patient and calm teacher. Despite many engine revs, strange grinding noises, and that time I killed the engine in the middle of the road with two cars behind me, he made me feel capable and confident. I’m glad to be building yet another skill here in Minnesota!
After a lunch comprised mainly of yellow-jacket trap setting, we headed out to P1 to map the gopher mounds. Those pesky little varmints have completely overturned much of the northeast corner of the garden–we found 51 mounds total, 49 of which were in that area. Too bad Roxy isn’t here to do some gopher hunting! Finally, we headed back out to Staffanson, this time to demo and GPS the six nearest neighbors of certain plants on the transect. Although we were three tags short and therefore not able to quite finish the job, we found and GPS-ed all the plants we needed!
After work, we headed down to Morris to watch Abby’s first cross country meet of the season! Having all run cross country at some point in our lives, Amy, Ali and I were very excited to be there. And we’re so proud of Abby, our swift gazelle–hopefully our enthusiastic cheering didn’t embarrass her too much!
 A gopher mound where an Echinacea should be 🙁 GO, ABBY, GO!!!
Here is everything that happened this weekend:
– We said goodbye to Gina as she heads home to New York for a week before starting class at Carleton. We miss you already Gina! Now there are only four of us living at the Town Hall.
– After we dropped Gina off at the Perkins where she caught her shuttle to the airport, Ali, Katherine, and I sobbed in the car for a while and then we went grocery shopping at Cub.
– We went back to Town Hall and congratulated ourselves on having already accomplished two items on our to-do list (drop off Gina, go grocery shopping) and rewarded ourselves by taking naps.
– Ali’s friend from school came and visited, and we went camping at Glacial Lakes State Park. Lots of nice prairie there! And lots of purple coneflower patches and magnets available for purchase at the park office. The only bad part about the park was that the interpretive signs had pictures of “native prairie plants” and had Echinacea purpurea listed.
– Ali taught me how to knit, and I made a yellow rectangle.
– Danny went to Northfield for the weekend and brought us back donuts from the Fireside Apple Orchard! Wow! Tis the season!
– I tried to make peanut butter but I burnt the peanuts so it was really gross. Ali made cucumber bread and it was pretty good; we ranked it 6 out of 10 would make again and 10 out of 10 would consume if starving.
– Watched the new T. Swift music video for the song “Wildest Dreams“: really beautiful scenery; she wears a brunette-wig and I’m kind of undecided about that.
It was a good weekend. Can’t believe it’s almost September!
We started off the day by doing demography rechecks at Landfill and the sites nearby, performing CSI like forensic investigation to determine which flowers were missing and which tags had been misentered the fist time around. We made a to a couple of remnants to harvest heads before lunch and then at lunch we got a final update from Will about his plans for heritability of phenology in the experimental plots. Gina was put in the hot seat, once again, to tell us everything she could about the results of Abby’s and her aphid exclusion experiment.
The afternoon was spent harvesting and though most of the heads in p1 and p2 aren’t ready to be harvested, we have quite a few from the remnants that have been clipped and bagged. We’re excited to try a new sampling technique in the remnants where not only are we taking 5 random heads, we’re also taking the earliest flowering, latest flowering, least isolated, and most isolated heads in order to see if they fit in with the patterns found in the overall population.
Today was Gina and Will’s last day at work and we’re sad to see them go but excited to see what they do with their projects from the summer as well as their own research interests.
Dear Reader: Before you embark on this adventure, may I recommend some easy listening? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc-P8oDuS0Q
This morning Abby, Gina, Katherine and I reluctantly returned to Loeffler’s Corner again to harvest heads. I say reluctantly because the last time this quad ventured to Loeffler’s it was to do demography rechecks. And that ended with us in the back of Abby’s car consoling our somewhat broken spirits with unroasted s’mores. However today with renewed spirits, we harvested with the vim and vigor of girls with clear hearts. In harvesting heads we knew we must take off everything, leaving nary a twist-tie in our wake. This ensures that heads can be uniquely identified, throughout the sorting process.
No longer beaten-down by Loeffler’s, we were far too young and clever to be confused by metal tags and dud flowers- no not us! Before getting in the van we cried too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye as we drove back to Hjelm house.
By the time we got back to Hjlem, Stuart had returned from his sojourn in Chicago! No longer do we wear beaten-down eyes sunk in smoke-dried faces, we were so happy to be reunited with Stuart. Abby could barely hold back a too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye she was so overjoyed, and Gina sang along and said she would surely hum this tune forever when she remembered the reunion. Who’d blame them for being glad, things round here have changed since Stuart’s been back and now we will have plenty of demo rechecks to do tomorrow!
The rest of the team spent the morning doing demo rechecks at Riley and East Riley, and sorting various harvest maps. They replaced many red twist-ties, because the red ties we put on plants at the beginning of the summer had lost their color and the poor old ties looked more clear than red! With each twist-tie added, members of Team Echinacea felt like they were putting pretty red dresses on the flowering plants.
At lunch, Gina talked about her findings from the aphid project. As Gina explained the statistics behind her analysis, I confess, I thought to myself: “Aah these things, I know they are real, but I swear what [s]he means could be said in plain english.” Stuart taught us how to explain our statistical results in language that is accessible to a broader audience, a valuable lesson for all scientists! Gina and Abby studied the same plants that were used in the 2012 aphid research and since then the plants have grown, so grown, and I must say now more than ever that there are more flowering than there were in the original data-set. To look at how more flowering plants may affect the data, the girls must come on out to P1 and assess herbivory on the cauline leaves. They were so resigned to what their fate was that they went straight to P1 after lunch to look at the leaves. These people round here really know how to tell a story of plant/insect interactions that captures the changes that occur in Echinacea populations over time.
After lunch, Katherine and I headed out to P1 to repaint Echinacea used in Q3 all the while humming Jonny Ray. Although his voice sounded sad on the radio, we can sing [his music] just like our fathers and that small comfort motivated us to do the best we could with the painting.
The Echinacea Project has taught me so much about teamwork, and at this moment, I remember that Katherine’s help means everything to me. You feel as if you can do the work alone, but when your hair verges on dirty, and you have shown weakness in the afternoon heat, it is your partner who will make you feel like saying too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye aye!
I look forward to the days when the Echinacea Project’s papers are as popular as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, a band who moved a million albums in mono. In the mean time, we spend our time fighting off hornets here at Hjelm House, unrecognized heros in the world of evolutionary ecology.
 Eileen- rendered in lunch
Today marked our third day without Stuart. But our arrival to a Stuart-less Hjelm house was made brighter by the appearance of a tiger salamander! (In Roxy’s absence, we’ve noticed quite a bounty of wildlife roaming the area.) Katherine, who has known since the age of 8 that the majestic and bafflingly cute creature is her favorite animal, was especially excited. After an extended photo op and cuddling session, the team finally managed to set the salamander back down and get on with the day’s work. We all agreed that he was an upgrade from Ricky.
 Katherine holds her first tiger salamander! Obvious soulmates. We spent most of the morning doing demography at the Rileys. Despite some grief and hardship caused by the abundance of mowed plants, we finished strong and well before lunch. Back at the Hjelm house we set to work cleaning and organizing, dealing with clutter that had been neglected for too long. Things got really exciting when Amy dug out the label maker. We spent lunch dreaming up big plans to label everything in the Hjelm house–in between fighting off the hornets.
 The Hjelm house is looking pretty good. After lunch, Will and I collected tissue samples from the Cirsium hillii at Hegg (that will be used to determine if the plants are distinct or actually one large plant) while Abby and Danny collected tissue from the angustifolia plants nearby the pallida restoration. Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and Amy stayed back to touch up the paint jobs on the heads for q3.
Our work done at Hegg, we headed back to Hjelm and packed away the tissue samples to dry out. We printed labels for the samples, but unfortunately the label maker ran out of paper before we could get on with the rest of our big labeling plans. Oh well. We’ll have to continue to do our best navigating the house with its very average level of labeling.
Heads for q3 wait in p1 to be harvested.
We were on our own again today because Stuart is still in Chicago. We wasted no time in getting out to P2 to measure some more. Our goal was to finish the rest of it this morning. We did just that and just in time for lunch! At lunch we had heated discussions about brownies/hot chocolate. Will also scrambled frantically around the porch for most of lunch trying to kill yellow jackets that have recently been appearing around lunch. His efforts were to no avail.
After lunch, we split into 2 groups. Will and Amy went and harvested heads at Landfill and Staffenson. Katherine, Gina, Danny, Ali and I also worked out at Staffenson doing demography. We ended the day with demography at East Elk Lake Road.
UPDATE ON RICKY/ERIC/CHARLIE/ERICA THE CATERPILLAR: I left the Hjelm house on Friday afternoon thinking that Ricky was going to have a safe weekend sleepover at the town hall. It was decided after I left, that he would be left on the grapevines near the porch because people were scared of him eating all the food in town hall. He hasn’t been seen since. I already miss that little stinker. 🙁
Pictured here is one of the best pet caterpillars there ever was.
Today when we arrived at the Hjelm house it was only 50 degrees! Brrrrrr! We were also down to a team of six following Ben’s last day on Friday and Stuart and Gretel heading back to Illinois over the weekend. (Abby was gone for her senior pictures). With so few people we got off to a quick start, because we knew we would need all the time we could get to get as much done with fewer crew members.
Our skeleton crew headed out to p2 to continue measuring that we started last Thursday. It was slow going but, having gotten through the thickest of the flowering plants on Thursday it was faster than it could have been. It is always windy at p2 since it is on top of a hill but today was especially windy and cold, most crew members could barely feel their hands which made entering data on the visor a challenge. We managed to get by, completing 20 rows before heading in for lunch.
After a warm up with some hot chocolate at lunch we headed out to do various things in the afternoon. Danny, Amy, Gina and I went to harvest heads in the remnants based on a sampling method that Danny and Amy developed. Ali and Katherine rechecked some funky measurements in p1 and harvested a few of the heads that will be used in the q3 experiment (exciting!). Amy and I went to a ton of different remnants and encountered a few problems, like at Stevens approach were most of the heads were mowed. The highlight of our afternoon was at Aanenson where we met a really friendly cow named Willow! she came up to the fence and let us pet her. Her not-so-outgoing friends were hesitant and we didn’t pet them. Willow even gave Amy’s hand a lick, “it felt really weird” said Amy shortly after the licking. Sadly we could not spend all afternoon with our new friend and went to continue harvesting.
Willow the cow investigates her new, soon-to-be friends, Will and Amy Willow’s friends investigate us from afar, clearly not as outgoing or cool as Willow.
This Sunday was, perhaps, the laziest day the Team Echinacea has experienced all summer. The excitement (and sadness) for the day was everyone driving down to Alexandria to drop Ben off so he could take the bus to the airport. He has since safely arrived in Rhode Island, much to our relief. The rest of the day spent laying on the couch, sitting at the table, laying in bed, reading, browsing the web, and a little bit of Echinacea oriented discussion. It got us nice and ready for a productive week to come.
Today was my last day of work for this summer. It was also Hattie and Per’s last days. They go back to school next week! It’s crazy how much this summer has flown by! To inaugurate my last day we started with rechecking demography records. We then had our last lunch with the Wagenius’ as a whole. They are headed off towards Chicago where Gretel, Hattie, and Per will be staying for the fall (Gretel will be back and forth). The afternoon became warmer and the sky cleared up. The rest of the team got trained in on how to harvest Echinacea heads in P1. I stayed behind to finish up some work on my independent project. At the end of the day Abby and Will left without saying goodbye (I wish you both good luck in the new school year and hope that excellent times come your way). But out biggest trouble was figuring out what to do with Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky. We debated whether to let him go on the grape vine outside the Hjelm house or to bring him back to town hall. We ultimately decided to let Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky go on the grape vine outside of the Hjelm house.
We then headed home for our usual Friday night pizza making session! We made wonderful veggie, sausage and green pepper, and pineapple pizzas! We then went outside to watch the sunset through the smoke from the wildfires in Montana and Washington. The sun was a beautiful orb of orange as it set over the soybean fields to the west of K-town. Then someone put Kent in the shower.
Well hello there Kent!
Invasive Potential of E. pallida in Western Minnesota:
TAYLORS
|
|
