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Today the team headed out to kjs to finish up the seedling refinds! We were happy to finish the site with the most seedlings! From kjs we went to P1 to do a harvest! On Thursday we were so proud of the progress we’d made with the harvest, and naively thoughtthat Thursday may have been the longest day! Little did we know we would spend the greater part of today ruthlessly chopping off the heads of the flowers we tended so carefully all summer. We may have lost more that just the flower’s heads out there! Happily we had a croc pot meal of chili with cornbread courtesy of Danny! Yum!
Today, Team Echinacea was the smallest it’s been so far this summer! With Stuart in Chicago for the week, and Abby and Matt starting off the school year over in Barrett, only Danny, Amy, Ali and I will be holding down the fort for the next few days. This morning, we headed to KJs to do seedling refinds. Despite the fact that it’s one of our smallest sites, KJs has far more focal plants for seedling searches than any other site, so we had our work cut out for us. Trying to find the seedlings we’re supposed to track among the hundreds of other seedlings present was pretty frustrating at times, but we persevered, and almost finished the site before lunchtime! After a quick lunch, we visited the remnants and Hegg Lake to harvest Echinacea heads. The good news is that the harvest at Staffanson was finished today! But the bad news is that all of East Riley and about half of Riley has been mowed. Tags are strewn all over the roadside, and many of the plants are gone. Luckily, only one of the plants we were planning to harvest was lost. At the end of the day, the four of us met up at Hegg to take demography data for two of the recruitment plots. We tagged quite a few new flowering plants!
A sad and lonely lunch table 🙁
Happy Labor Day from Team Echinacea! We made the most of the long weekend by doing lots of traveling. Danny went to Evanston to move things in before he moves there in a few weeks. He brought lots of the heads we harvested last week in an effort to keep up with the volunteer’s fast-paced processing of our harvest thus far! Meanwhile, Katherine, Ali, and I went up to Ely, MN to visit a friend of mine who works at a camp up there. The camp was hosting a music festival this weekend with artists like Lucy Michelle, Jeremy Messersmith, and The Pines. We were very excited to see the rocks, trees, and varied topography of the region which were all very different from what we’ve been experiencing in Douglas County. On Saturday morning we went mushroom hunting with Jeremy Messersmith, who happens to be a big mushroom enthusiast. Who knew! Later that day we went paddle-boarding and kayaking on the lake, which was really fun. Then we watched the concert! Super good. We capped off the day with some square-dancing with our fellow concert-goers. A great day. Sunday was similar, with more awesome music in the afternoon. We drove back today taking a scenic route through some good Minnesota towns I hadn’t been to before like Hibbing, Grand Rapids, and Akeley, which is the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. Danny is still on his way back from Chicago now. Stuart will be working at the Garden for the week, so it’s just us kids here in charge of getting everything done this week. There’ll be lots of harvesting to do in the experimental plots as well as plenty of refinding the seedlings that Team Echinacea has kept track of over the past 6 years in the remnants.
Us and Paul
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! 🙂
This morning, the team spent some time catching up on smaller activities. Matt and Katherine worked on their website which we all eagerly anticipate, Danny and Amy planned for the rest of their year with the Echinacea Project, and Abby and I worked on the aphid project. I tried to channel Gina as I took her place as Abby’s partner, but must admit defeat- that girl is irreplaceable and very missed!
We spent the rest of the morning at East Elk Lake Road doing seedling refinds. We’re getting the hang of this new protocol, and it’s exciting to try to see maps that 2011 team members have made, and follow their tracks to find the tiny echinacea plants.
After lunch, we had a lot of harvesting to do! We teamed up and powered through the afternoon, motivated by visions of puppies in our future. Sure enough, as we approached town hall we saw the bundle of white puppies that our neighbors have outside their house! We have all agreed that they are the most wonderful thing to have ever existed ever ever. We stopped for a quick snuggle before going home to make pizza!
We started out the day learning about seedling refinds. We aren’t looking for any more new seedlings this year but trying to find plants that were seedlings between 2007 and 2013. It was difficult at first but we all go the hang of it pretty quickly.
 Stuart helps Katherine and Abby with a tricky bunch of seedlings At lunch, we heard Abby and Matt give us previews of talks that they’re going to give during the year. After lunch we went to a new site and it was an adventure and a half! Or at least it was new for most of this summer’s team. First we walked along the road and enjoyed the sunny day. Next, we trekked across a soybean field that looks like it’s going to have a good crop this year but it was really hard for us to get through. Finally we walked through some trees to discover a small paradise hidden between fields. We did demography on and surveyed all the flowering plants that we could find. We found 20 plants this year which, according to Stuart, is a lot less than they’ve seen in previous years. We ended the day with a delicious refrigerated watermelon that was pulled from the garden yesterday.
Up the road Across the field The lush hillside
September 1 was a day full of harvesting heads, and collecting data. Now that doesn’t sound so exciting until you are put into a small pick-up truck with a driver who is new to a manual transmission! I had the pleasure of yet again defying death while instructing two team members (you know who you are!) on how to work the clutch and make the truck go. There was a few body shaking jerks to the system and an attempt to make a new road, but I made it back alive each time, and so did all the harvested echinacea! All kidding aside though, both will be proficient gear jammers by summers end! Who knew that studying echinacea would be exciting in so many different ways!
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!
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