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 Everyone’s thrift ready! Today we decided to do a little thrifting before going grocery shopping. One of my favorite things to do is shop and I love thrift stores! Everyone got some really cool stuff all for just a few bucks.
It’s been really humid outside all day until now… We just finished spending about half an hour out on the porch watching the clouds shift across the sky. We were pretty convinced a tornado was on its way because part of the sky was green and the clouds were doing funny swirl-like movements. Not to mention our phones kept alarming us all with tornado-warning alerts and the fire department’s loud siren didn’t fail to have us migrate to the inside of the house. Fortunately, there is no tornado but only rain. Looks like we’ll be wearing boots to work tomorrow!
Out storm watching on the porch.
Yesterday, members of Team Echinacea went on a field trip to the Pembina Trail Preserve, a huge reserve of land owned by the Nature Conservancy between Fertile and Crookston, MN. Gretel has been working on a project there looking at the effects of different management techniques on the western prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara) for many years, and we helped out by counting and mapping flowering orchids in two experimental plots.
We got an early start, leaving from the Hjelm house at 6 AM. Everyone fell asleep on the drive up except for Gretel and Lea, who were driving. It was already 80 degrees when we got to Fertile around 9 AM. It was fun to be in a different type of prairie: the Pembina Trail Preserve is located in the Red River Valley so the landscape is very flat. It was much wetter than the prairies we study—we saw species like mountain mint, sedges, sandhill cranes, and snipes, which thrive in the moist environment.
 Western fringed prairie orchid We counted orchids in one plot in the morning, working systematically in teams: two people searched for orchids and counted the number of flowers on each plant, one person kept track of where we were on the grid by finding wooden posts with coordinates, and one person followed behind with a GPS unit, shooting points at each plant. In the first plot, we found 301 orchids. This is a lot more flowering orchids than there have been the past couple of years; two years ago there weren’t any!
Next, we ate lunch in the grass before walking a mile to the second plot. Little did we know that we were in for a very full afternoon of orchid counting! True quotes from day include: “Wow there are so many orchids”, “Sulu [the GPS unit] can’t find a connection, space weather must be bad,” “this post doesn’t have coordinates on it,” “I can’t find any posts,” “I can’t believe how many orchids there are,” “I might not like orchids anymore,” and (in the field at 5PM) “the ice cream shop in Fertile is closing.”
 Sulu takes a time out by the tree But all complaining aside, we felt very accomplished having found 537 more orchids, bringing our daily total to 838. Wow! This is a lot more than we were expecting. Just based on impressions from yesterday, it seemed like the haying management treatment—when an area is mowed at the end of the flowering season and the grass collected for hay—promoted flowering. Maybe the disturbance helps to distribute the orchid seeds.
 Happy to be finished with a full day of work! We all felt refreshed after Gretel bought us F’real milkshakes and Gatorade at the gas station in Fertile. Then we drove to the pelican-themed metropolis of Pelican Rapids and ate dinner at Taqueria Escobar, a Mexican family restaurant. Quotes from dinner include: “This is a lot of food,” “Yum,” “You know, I actually do like orchids,” and “Today turned out to be a really nice day.”
In August, Gretel will go back to Pembina in August to see how many of the orchids produce seeds. Stay tuned for updates!
Today was all about pure phenology. We assembled ready to go at 8:30 and all got randomized assignments for phenology. We split into seven cars and seven routes, Per and Hattie helped too! We all worked with purpose until lunch, marking style persistence on each flowering head. I even found one head that had completely finished flowering and was already dry and pointy. I wish I had the foresight to photograph it, but at 11:30 with only half an hour to lunch I guess I was not thinking clearly. At lunch we shared the photos of weird flowers that were taken. The caterpillar flower at On27 was looking nicely wrapped up.
 A cozy home for a creative caterpillar Another interesting head was one that Gretel found. The bracts were covered with ants and aphids.
Echinacea angustifolia’s specialist aphids infiltrate the bracts After we ate lunch, we split into five teams. One group went to finish phenology at On27. A few groups took on phenology in p1 (including 99 south). I worked with Abby to assess all of the funky records that were taken at p1. After we created two separate lists of all the flowering heads in p1, Gretel compared the lists and made a list of all of the records that were either contradictory, possible duplicates, or potentially incorrect for other reasons. After much debate about how to indicate which records were in fact correct, Abby and I visited each mystery record and noted whether the record was “G” for “good” or “D” for “delete”.
We finished up a little early and were let off for the day because of the early morning tomorrow (for all of us heading up to Pembina to look at orchids.) We headed straight off to Elk Lake for a bit of a swim, and Stuart, Gretel, Hattie, and Per showed up to take a dip with us! It was a great way to cool off after the first of two PURE PHENOLOGY days.
Sunscreen BEFORE swimming is essential
Today I arrived at the Hjelm House and was greeted by this little guy.
 A tree frog waiting to say hello to everyone! This morning was the first in forever that we didn’t do phenology! Tomorrow we get to spend the whole day doing phenology at ALL of the sites! Amy and I got to adventure out this morning to GPS at a lot of sites. There were only a few points at each, so it went smooth and quick. Gina and Danny did the same, and now we are done GPSing! That means for our big phenology day tomorrow, we will get to use accurate maps at every site! Woohoo! The rest of the flower children worked out in P1 for the morning. They flagged and twist tied the remaining flowering plants.
At lunchtime, Amy and Brad Dykstra stopped in on their way home from checking on one of Amy’s plots in South Dakota.
We spent the afternoon in P1 doing a review of all the plants. We want to make sure the row, position, and twist ties match the other phenology records.
Hattie found a little bud hiding near the base that needed to be twist tied!
We had a pretty standard morning of phenology today. The only noteworthy incident happened to Abby and Amy–they lost, and later miraculously found, a green pen in the prairie. Yep, that was the most exciting part of our morning! At lunch, we were all sad because Will wasn’t there. (Get well soon, Will!) We split up in the afternoon. Amy and Danny did computer work, Ben, Abby, Gina and Per finished P2, and Lea, Taylor, Ali and I went to Staffanson to stake points. Ali and I walked about a million miles to get to all our plants, finding parts of the preserve we didn’t even know existed. At the end of our route, we were rewarded for our hard work with the discovery of raspberry bushes filled with newly ripening berries, which improved morale considerably.
Ali loves wood lilies. A lot. Protecting the GPS from harm This guy stayed on me for a full 5 minutes. New BFF?
This morning we were excited to see the sunshine again! The haze of the Canadian fires has obscured the sun the past week or so, lulling us into a false perception that we didn’t have to wear sunscreen! Some of the team fell into the trap, and ended the day with sunburnt necks after a day of heads bent down in search of Echinacea. This morning we did half of the phenology routes, and finishing up GPSing. Danny and Stuart have been hard at work consolidating the GPS data to create maps that we can use to help speed up the phenology process, and corroborate tag data to increase accuracy. After lunch many people worked on their independent projects. Will, Ben, and I headed to Hegg Lake. Ben got to work staking out plots to be used for seed collection. Will and I continued working on P2, and even found a plant that was on its first day of flowering (eek!). We all made good progress today, and are looking forward to finishing up tagging plants so we can begin phenology to ensure we do not miss any flowering Echinacea!
Today was our day off, and I decided to spend the day on the lake. I took out my kayak and fishing pole and spent the afternoon paddling around on Union Lake, which is located just south of Alexandria. I saw a loon family swimming around the lake, earlier this spring there were two chicks, unfortunately there was only one today. 
Even though today was relaxing and fun I will be glad to get back to work tomorrow! There is a lot to do before flowering starts ramping up.
Flowering Echinacea take no holiday! Half of the Team got up early on this Saturday morning and headed out into the field to make sure we stay on top of the fast-paced world of phenology. With the crew re-assembled back at the Town Hall for the afternoon, the rest of the day proceeded lazily–fitting for the humid weather and the holiday at hand. Munching on the delicious leftovers from yesterday’s picnic, reading, and napping in turn, we passed a couple hours before heading over to Elk Lake once again. (The small lake-side beach has become a favorite haunt for the group!) Lea clearly still had Echinacea on her mind and made this awesome watercolor. (Note the pollen! How long do you think this plant has been flowering?)
Lea’s watercolor of Echinacea! Oobleck: one part water, two parts corn starch, one part magic. After returning home we had some old-school, science-themed fun with “oobleck”–a miraculous mix of water and corn starch yielding a substance that’s somehow both a solid and liquid. We finished off the night with a delicious (and festive) s’mores pie baked by Amy.
Happy Fourth of July on behalf of Team Echinacea!
 S’mores pie!
 Everyone is excited and ready to go for the day! We got to the Hjelm House in the morning and had some exciting new maps ready for us to use and update as we found more Echinacea. We went out right away and did phenology in half of the remnants finding quite a few newly flowering plants as well as many more plants that will be flowering soon. The remnant Echinacea populations are getting marked with hundreds of flags and plenty of new tags!
 One of our Halictid friends visits a flower. I see style shriveling in this plants future We got done at around noon and headed back to our places of living to make food for our afternoon picnic. We made it to Elk Lake by mid-afternoon and spent the day eating delicious food and having fun on the lake!
The delicious food cooked by various members of the team
We started off this beautiful morning by going out in groups of 2 or 3 people to do phenology and mark points with the GPS. We get faster and more efficient at this everyday. Kevin Kotts from the MN Dept. of Natural Resources came and talked to us at lunch. He told us about his work restoring and conserving grasslands and wetlands in west central Minnesota. We learned a lot! After lunch, some people went out to mark more points with the GPS and the majority of us went out to P2 to continue flagging and twist tying flowering plants. We worked hard until late afternoon, and then called it a day.
 This plant at Hegg Lake has 13 flowering heads! Hattie helped us flag and twist tie at P2 today!
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