Tuesday’s weather compared to Monday was “not as bad” to speak Minnesotan. While individual projects were tackled and we measured in the afternoon, it still isn’t done. The glimmer of hope is that one good day of measurement will finish the task for the year.
In more MN terms, the storm Wed morning was also not so bad as the late July storm last year that uprooted trees and took out power. The picture is from the Runestone Park devastation that Maria and I witnessed last year.
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With the goal to be done with work by noon, I biked up to the Hjelm house at 6:30 this morning to survey flowering plants in the common garden, and by 7:30 was hunkered down in the Hjelm house basement with the dissecting scope and an army of ants. Since Thursday, I’ve been identifying the ants I collected from Echinacea plants. Ant ID can be incredibly frustrating, given their small size and minute characteristics. For instance, one of the major differences between genera is the number of teeth on the mandibles! Exasperated after two hours of looking through the scope, I decided to pin my ants and return to ID-ing on Monday. Other than my ant party, here’s what else was going on today: –Kelly flew Felix, our adopted kitten, to his new family this morning! Today most of us started out doing phenology in the Common Garden. Phenology is starting to go much quicker. Hooray! The rest of the morning was spent working on individual projects. Most projects are drawing to a close already. Time sure flies! Jill spent the morning identifying the species she collected from her pitfall traps in the remnants. Maria was found over at Hegg Lake collecting seeds and anthers. She also looked at some dicanthelium at other sites and discovered that they were all mostly done flowering. Kelly and I spent the morning out at our remnants doing phenology and finishing up my experiment. I assessed my last cross for the summer! Some of my crosses were flops due to the caterpillars that ate my anthers and styles. Meanies. How to tell they are there? They leave a TON of frass everywhere. In the afternoon, we continued to measure plants in the Common Garden. Maybe we’re halfway there? We’ve nonetheless become pros at measuring echinacea. Bring it on!! Today was a pretty standard mid-summer day for Team Echinacea. Because of the early flowering, there is no lack of work to be done in order to keep up with the flowers. In the morning, Jill and Katherine emptied Jill’s pitfall traps at the Northwest Landfill, North-Northwest Landfill, and East Elk Lake Road sites. They found lots of insects including thatch ants and several different types of ground beetles. Lydia and I went out to several of the remnants to work on our phenology and incompatibility research. Andrew and Shona worked together on Andrew’s pollinator observations in the C1 Garden. After a string of unlucky days it looks like the bees are finally coming out again! Maria continues to wake up before the sun to observe Dicanthelium , although it sounds like they have stopped producing pollen so a well-earned reprieve might be on the way. In the afternoon we measured away in C1. We’ve finally made it to the ’99 garden! I think we might be half way done! Here’s a picture of our new mascot. He was generously brought to us by Roxy last Thursday and we’re all very excited to have such a unique pet!
In case you can’t tell from the picture, that’s a pretty swelled up tick. Ew! To end on a slightly prettier note, here’s a picture of Monarda fistulosa, also known as Bee Balm. This plant was flowering at Pembina Trail Preserve yesterday, but I saw others flowering today at Staffanson Prairie Preserve. To me they look like something straight out of a Dr. Seuss book!
This morning most of us got a taste of Maria’s regular schedule when we arrived at the Hjelm house by 6am for a special trip. We drove three hours Northwest to the Pembina Trail Preserve to help Gretel count western prairie fringed orchids for her work with the Nature Conservancy. Unfortunately it seems to be a bad year for orchids and we only managed to find one that wasn’t even in either of the grids we were searching (In previous years there have been as many as 2,000 in the combined grids). As we were searching we met another group that was surveying the entire preserve, and they reported that they had only found 23 flowering orchids, so I guess we were lucky to see any at all! Although we were disappointed by the lack of orchids, we did see many new plant species and wildlife that we haven’t seen around K-town. Here are a few of them: Spiraea alba While we were all gone Katherine and Maria stayed behind to work on their projects. Today was a quiet Sunday in K-town. While I indulgently slept in this morning, here’s what was going on in the field: -Katherine, Shona, and Kelly surveyed flowering Echinacea in the common garden Other than fieldwork, a few of us went out to Alexandria yesterday to explore the downtown, visit Big Ole, and nab some Cherry Berry, our favorite self-serve frozen yogurt bar. We also discovered that if you buy a t-shirt and wear it to Cherry Berry on Tuesdays, you can get free frozen yogurt! Yum! Tomorrow, the gang is heading out to Pembina Trail Preserve (between Fertile and Crookston, MN) to count Western prairie fringed orchids (Platanthera praeclara) in wet prairie. Photos to come! (Again, I can’t figure out why my photos always flip sideways when I upload them or how to fix it) Despite the wet and windy weather, the morning proceed as usual with each of us working dutifully on each of our respective projects. Jill and Katherine were especially productive, flagging and surveying all of their plants in Staffanson, a task which took all morning until 2. Shona completed her last hybrid cross and Lydia, Maria, and Kelly continued their field work. Unfortunately, I was not quite as successful since the pollinators do not seem to like eating during storms. The clouds retreated in the afternoon and we were able to get a substantial amount of measuring done; It’s a large garden, but we are making great progress. The exciting event of the day was a discovery: Josh’s Nalgene which he lost in the west side of Staffanson last summer. It survived a year of weathering and a spring burn just fine and still had water in it and a functioning lid. Nope we did not sleep in until 9pm. On the contrary, we spent our Saturday morning doing fieldwork! Team Echinacea is really dedicated to our independent projects! Saturday was a clear day with cool temps in the morning but temperatures rose around mid morning. Kelly was doing phenology and Lydia was painting bracts and bagging heads for her crosses at the remnants. Yours truly was also at Hegg Lake from dawn till 11.30am, doing Dichanthelium pollen addition (only 4 spikelets needed pollen addition, looks like the Dichanthelium are finishing up flowering!) One of the great things about doing fieldwork in the early morning is the chance to witness spectacular views of the outdoors. I stopped several times on the way to my site to get pictures of this magnificence:
5:32am on Kittleson Road.
In the afternoon, some of us chilled out at home, took naps, went for a run, did groups abs exercise. Kelly, Lydia, Jill and Shona went to downtown Alexandria for some sightseeing and groceries. After they got back (around 8pm), we started making pancakes (gluten free corn pancakes, Katherine’s recipe) and Kelly’s authentic Spanish dish Tortilla Espanola. The pancakes turned out to be scrambled as we did not know the secret (=patience!). Thanks to the help of Jill and Shona, we managed to commence dinner at 9pm. After dinner, we all helped clean up. Then everyone (except myself because I had to get myself to bed) played bananagrams.
yay Kelly!
After three very hot days, the humidity dropped slightly today, to the point where we weren’t all sweating just standing outside, and there was even a nice breeze off and on. Who needs a sauna when you have the great outdoors? Yes, it was another hot and sticky day in Kensington, and we took it on and beat it. This morning, Katherine, Jill, and Lydia went to several remnants while Katherine used Sulu, the GPS, to find last year’s and this year’s flowering plants to use for ant and aphid surveys, and Lydia performed crosses on several plants at East Elk Lake Road and Around Landfill. Bug Catcher Kelly and Bug Catcher Andrew used Sweepnet in the Common Garden to collect pollinators. It was super effective! Shona and Maria were found over at Hegg Lake performing/analyzing crosses on echinacea and dicanthelium. This afternoon (or rather, last afternoon), a number of us continued measuring all the plants in the Common Garden. We’re 1/4 done!!! |
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