August 5 saw the team on its second day of measuring plants in P1. Ruth was there to help and we appreciated it! We found a lot of plants and learned about some of the insects that are found on the plants. If we had a lot of aphids on a plant we told Gina and Abby so they could collect them for their aphid project. We are learning how to do the process and getting much faster at it. Looks like rain tomorrow, so we may be delayed in getting back to it.
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With three of us out of town, and Danny occupied with his girlfriend Lauren’s visit, it was a pretty quiet weekend at the town hall. After a particularly lazy Saturday, Lea, Taylor, Gina and I decided on Sunday morning to spend the day in Alex. First we went to Art in the Park, which was a much bigger event than I had imagined! We listened to live music, ate free samples, and admired the work of local artists (some of which featured Echinacea!) For lunch, we went to Mi Mexico, which was yummy despite the fact that I ordered the most boring item on the menu. (I guess I didn’t realize that a bean burrito would literally just be beans in a tortilla…oh well.) After lunch, we stopped at an antique shop and spent hours getting lost in the labyrinth of shelves and rooms until we were told that the store was closing and we had better check out. We made one last stop at the grocery store, and then returned to the town hall with our wallets slightly emptier but happy to have made the most of our day off.  Spotted this beauty at Art in the Park! 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. Birds foot trefoil has slowly been making its way into P1 along with its buddy Canada thistle. The time has come to put an end to it! Today P1 was mapped out and all the invaders were marked for termination. The eradication will began right after the next rain. It looks like perhaps Friday will be the day as rain is looking good for Thursday. Everyone will have to glove up and teach these pesky invaders a lesson! Look further down the post to see how Will has devised a plan for extra triple protection from sun to take on the task!
Will has decided that extra protection will be needed to take on this task and its shown here demonstrating the latest in ultra triple protection. No sun will be getting in his eyes!
Another long morning of phenology Nobody knew the protocol, apparently Gretel sunk our visors one by one Until 12:30 we toiled in the sun So much end of flowering to observe The plants have been thriving at Staffanson Preserve Into boots our feet slid after lunchtime fun For Hegg Lake had much more work to be done On the hills we tagged more angustifolia flowers Lots of us also helped Taylor and Amy for hours If only we understood those rogue Echinacea plants… Another cruel joke by Team Pallida, perchance??  Measuring baby hybrids for Taylor’s experiment!
 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. 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? 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! It was a busy day for Team Echinacea! We started out by spending the morning working on phenology, which is in full swing this week. By dividing and conquering, we were able to visit the plants at half of our sites. While the majority of the plants are still in the “bud” stage, we are starting to see lots of flowering–I even saw my first shriveled style at Riley! After lunch, the team split up. Amy took Lea and I back to Riley and taught us to shoot points with the GPS units, while the rest of the team headed to Hegg Lake to flag both the P2 experiment and some invasive Echinacea pallida plants. Lea got the hang of the procedure very quickly, shooting almost a hundred points! I, however, had struggle after struggle with Chekov, which lost its connection as soon as we got to East Riley despite my valiant efforts at troubleshooting. Hopefully my next experience doing GPS will go more smoothly!  Legions of flagged plants at East Riley  Abby and Taylor taking on Riley! |
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