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!
|
||||
|
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. 🙁  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. Today was hot. Like, REALLY hot. But there was work to be done, and Team Echinacea is a tough bunch. So, despite the soul-crushing heat and humidity, we managed to finish measuring in P1!!! Yay!!! It was a monumental moment, and a great way to finish off the week. We celebrated/rehydrated with watermelon and root beer floats! In other news, progress was made on the aphid and seed harvesting fronts today. Phenology is continuing to wind down, and Ricardo the caterpillar is eating everything in site.  He/she is getting so big!  The team enjoying root beer floats Today is Taylor’s last day which is really sad because she is a cool cat who will be greatly missed. This summer would have been very different without Taylor. She has brought lots of joy and laughs to the town hall. Taylor will be missed dearly. Taylor is heading out to the Chicago Botanic Gardens to present her poster on the invasive potential of Echinacea palida! She’s been giving us her pitch frequently and it is sounds really good. Good luck to Taylor at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and with all of her adventures in the future! We better see you soon!
In other news it was superhot and humid today. We got treated last week and Monday with cooler and less humid days. Much of Team Echinacea has been zipping off our pant legs and kicking off out shoes in favor of our sandals in spite of the possibility of Chiggers and ticks. We did a little bit of phenology this morning. It did not take long because there were only 26 plants to visit in the remnants. It’s crazy because it does not seem like it was long ago that we were spending all day doing phenology. After phenology we spent all day measuring Experimental Plot 1. I got to spend some time by myself Harvesting Galium for my independent project. We also made a Friend who we named Eric!  Our friend Eric!!
Everyone wore the tye dye that we made on Sunday! IT LOOKS AMAZING!!!  Model life  Happiness! August 11 was an extra hot day. We started the day with phenology and then worked on taking plant measurements in P1 before lunch. The wise decision was made to measure again after lunch and then quit measuring and work on personal projects during the most intense heat of the day! Turned out great! Sounds like the rest of the week is supposed to be extra hot as well. We are going to have to do measuring in the mornings I think. We are making good progress and should have at least P1 and the 99 garden done by weeks end! Phenology is taking very little time now, so it will soon be time for the next stage! Let’s hope for a good breeze tomorrow! Sunday was a very special day for us at the town hall: our baby Ben turned 20! His sister Liz flew all the way up from Utah to visit him, and we got to hear about her research job out west. At 1, we all headed up to Barrett to see Hattie and Per perform in a production of Robin Hood that they’d been practicing all week at theater camp. It was a great show, and we even got to stay for a potluck afterwards! (Unfortunately, nobody had brought a hot dish for our non-Midwesterners to try.) When we got back to the town hall, we decided to tye-dye, something we’d been meaning to try all summer. Many items got tye-dyed, from shirts to socks to bedsheets to Ben’s knees. To cap off the night, we ate Ben’s birthday cake out at the gazebo, accompanied by a gorgeous sunset. It was a fun-filled day!  Per and Hattie at the end of the show  Tye-dying fun!  Ben’s beautifully decorated cake  “Birthday Boy” 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. 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. |
||||
|
© 2026 The Echinacea Project - All Rights Reserved - Log in Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||
