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We are down in numbers this week. Leah, Alyson, Alex, and Jennifer headed back to Ohio last week, and Amy and Will are in Florida for the ESA meeting this week.
Even with the low numbers we’ve been very productive these past two days. On Monday, we did phenology on the few plants that are still flowering. Then people split off and worked on individual projects and aphid treatments. Ruth Shaw and Margaret Kuchenreuther, a biology professor from Univ. MN Morris, came in for lunch.After lunch we headed out to Loeffler’s Corner to do some (former) seedling refinds.
This morning, we all split up to accomplish a lot. Scott and I finished up the aphid treatments from yesterday, Laura rechecked her project plant positions, Lea went out to Staffanson to put more plants into her project form, and James GPSed some more edges. Laura and Scott also found time to measure P6. At lunch, we had a delicious chocolate cake from Gretel and Hattie. YUM! After lunch we did full demo at Tower and South of Golf Course. We headed straight to Elk Lake after work to cool down and have fun!
Unfortunately, today was my last day with Team Echinacea. Thanks for a summer full of fun, learning, and prairies!
 Teamwork makes the dream work.  Scott searches for a tag during demo.  Yay! We’ve found a tag!  Saying goodbye to Roxy was the hardest. đ
Some of the team headed out this morning to do phenology. The flowers are quickly finishing up and many sites have no more flowering plants. Amy and Will stayed back to work on their posters for the Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting next week in Florida!
After phenology, people worked on aphid treatments and Laura painted bracts. We took an early lunch and then began the daunting task of measuring the 99 and 99 south gardens to finish out P1.  We worked quickly and efficiently. Afterwards, we celebrated the P1 victory with root beer floats.
 Wow so tall To help celebrate Monday Funday, this flower is made out of burnt up toothpicks from P8.Â
Today we weren’t just Team Echinacea. We were Extreme Team Echinacea. Will used his monster truck derby announcing voice to let everyone know that what we were doing today was extreme. This morning, we were sent out on special missions to do phenology, pollinator observations, or both (so extreme). We finished everything and still had time to collect phlox seed and do an aphid treatment before lunch. Wow.
At lunch, we talked about fun afternoon project ideas, like seeing whose car has the best working AC and finding out which area lake is best for swimming. Instead of doing those things, we got right back out to measure P1, which has a climate similar to a sauna. Every group only had to measure 2 rows and we were done for the week.
Back at the Hjelm House, Scott found some aphids crawling on his shirt and adopted them as his own children. We all enjoyed some root beer floats, and Scott enjoyed his new found fatherhood.
YAY FOR ROOT BEER FLOATS!!
We met a half hour early today so we could do pollinator observations during what we thought would be their peak time. We were wrong. Hardly any bees were out and about on this very windy morning. Everyone finished around 10:30 and we met down in P1 to weed the birdsfoot trefoil.
This little mouse greeted us in G3 this morning. The lunch table was very crowded today as we had a number of special visitors. Ruth Shaw, Dan (a grad student from U of M), and Amy and Brad Dykstra all came to help out. They also brought yummy chocolates and muffins for a lunch treat.
After lunch, everyone set out different ways. Some people went GPSing and some went to catch pollinators. I got to stay back to teach Lea, Scott, Alyson, and James my special talent, aphid exclusion and addition. Last summer, I worked a lot on the aphid project so it was a lot of fun to do again! Alyson even sang to the aphids to sooth them into their new homes. Roxy saw how much fun we were having and decided to join us for awhile in P1. We found 70/100 original addition/exclusion plants, including 33/50 addition and 37/50 exclusion ones.
 Here’s some aphids I found on a collection plant in P1.  Team members learning the ways of aphids. Today I also took my first trip to the infamous bog with Alyson and James! Roxy, the bog dog, took me on a wonderful tour of the place. On our way up, we stopped to pet the goats.
 Alyson trying to escape the treacherous bog waters.  Scape Goat eats out of James’s hand.
The team all headed in on Saturday morning to help do phenology at all the remnants, P1, and P2. Stuart explained the maps to everyone and we were off. James and I headed out to the Rileys and Loeffler’s Corner. Many of the plants were midflowering. We finished our route in about 3 hours and headed back to the Hjelm House to begin P1 phenology. Scott wasn’t far behind and came out to help in P1. After that, everyone gathered around the porch and we worked on correcting some of the GPS/phenology mix ups so the maps can be more useful.
We all went our separate days feeling relieved that we made it through full phenology.
This morning we split into 2 groups. Amy and Danny headed over to KJs. They staked points and are now ready for seedling refinds sometime next week. Ali, Katherine and I harvested Q3 heads. We got 40 in all! It sprinkled a little this morning, so the heads were a little damp. We set up a drying station for them.
 Ali and Katherine with the beautiful Q3 heads!
Lots of colors! After everyone finished up that, Stuart taught Ali and Katherine how to dissect the harvested heads.
 Stuart demonstrates proper dissection methods. Ali and Katherine practice dissection while Danny does absolutely nothing productive. It sprinkled a little after lunch, so we waited until about 2:00 to head out to P2 to harvest. Although we started a little later than we would have liked, we still finished up in about 2 hours! A lot faster than yesterdays P1 harvest!
To celebrate a week full of hard work and fun, we had root beer floats! Unfortunately, today was my last day with Team Echinacea. I start my senior year at West Central Area High School on Tuesday. I had a great summer and I learned so much! đ
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. đ
Pictured here is one of the best pet caterpillars there ever was.
This morning, Team Echinacea was awakened by a text message from Stuart saying that we would be starting an hour later than usual. Then we were awakened 4 more times by texts from Danny. He wanted to tell us good morning and also that we would be starting an hour later. He also told us he was excited for the extra hour of sleep. Then finally, he apologized because none of those texts were actually meant for our group message.
It was raining really hard this morning, just like it has been for what seems like forever. Most people did computer work. Gina and I continued our statistical analysis on our aphid addition/exclusion data. The rain finally stopped around lunch time, so after lunch we were able to go out to the remnants and do demography.
Ben works in windy conditions at ON27. Amy and Katherine work on demography at RRX. We finished off the day by weeding the rest of the trefoil on the roadside near P1. Will discovered his love for the new tool called the garden knife. We saw a bald eagle while walking back to the Hjelm house at the end of the day and they told me I have to flog about it. So this flog post is dedicated to that bald eagle.
After a very heavy rain last night, we got to start our work day 45 minutes later than usual. Even though we started late, we were able to finish phenology at all of the sites (including P1 and P2), and crosses for Q3 before lunch. At peak flowering time, we had over 2000 plants to check on in the remnants and today that number was down to 211.
Rare sight! This plant hasn’t begun flowering yet!
Gina and I had time to do an aphid treatment today. The results were very exciting! Of our 33 addition plants, 25 already had aphids on them. We also only found 1 aphid during our exclusion treatment!
Here are some of those cute little aphids!
Everyone measured for awhile before heading out to P2 to finish off our thistle pulling job. Stuart brought a watermelon out there for everyone to enjoy. It was the perfect way to end a great week!
On Friday, Gina and I didn’t have time to do our aphid treatments, so we decided to meet on Saturday morning. We collected aphids from around P1 and added 2-3 to each of our 50 addition plants. Then, we checked over all 50 of our exclusion plants to make sure those sneaky aphids weren’t trying to start a colony. So far, only 4 addition plants have started aphid colonies, but Gina and I learn more and more everyday about aphid tending. Sometimes we talk to them while moving them to their new plant homes. They seem to appreciate and enjoy this. The treatments went really quickly and we finished in about an hour.
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