While just last Friday we were straining under the heat and humidity and dripping sweat onto our visors as we pushed through field work, today was one of the coldest days of the summer so far and had us bundled up in our flannels, rain coats, and wool socks.
We started off the frigid morning going over the demography protocol before all heading out as a team to Steven’s Approach and Aanenson to give it a try. A newly-organized g3 helped things run smoothly as we got ready to head out. (As promised in yesterday’s post, here’s a picture featuring g3 as it’s never been seen before!)
Ben revels in the beauty that is g3. Tubs are now labeled and color-coded.
Out in the field, Stuart made sure that we got some “active searching” practice as we tried to find plants that had been missed back in the days of phenology (i.e. a couple weeks ago). After just two sites, greying skies, menacing rain, and numb hands sent us back to the Hjelm house just in time for a chilly lunch on the porch featuring steaming mugs of tea and chocolate chip zucchini cookies (baked by Ali and Amy).
Brrrrr. Warm cups of tea at lunch helped remedy the cold. Note that Danny broke out his hat!
The storm picked up in the afternoon and left us stationed at the Hjelm house for the rest of the day getting some computer work done for our independent projects. After a summer spent applying our aphid addition and exclusion treatments, Abby and I were excited to start looking over our data set and get to work analyzing it! More updates to come.
Ali and Ben take a look at the results of Ben’s seed harvesting out at Hegg Lake.
