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It is one of my greatest failures that after four summers in a part of Minnesota where there are more lakes than people I still do not know how to fish. Therefore, this summer when I am not measuring Echinacea I can often be found on a lake trying to learn how to fish. I have been only somewhat successful in this endeavor (as you can see by the picture below). However, with the help of Ian, my dad, and my Kensington friend Clint, I am completely confident that by the end of the summer I will be a mediocre fishing woman.
This summer, much more so than in years past, fishing has been a major pastime for a number of the field crew when we are not learning the wonders of Echinacea. Overall I contribute the increase in fishing to two major factors; one living at Andes where we have access to a row boat on a lake full of fish, and, more importantly, actually having crew members that can tie fishing line on hooks (before last week this was not me). Below I have included just a few pictures of our fishing excursions. However, for the entire 112 fishing pictures (most thanks to Ian) see my piacasa web album at http://picasaweb.google.com/ison.jennifer/FishingInMinnesota
Lake Isaac
Is a lake nearly completely on Andes property with a row boat that we have been given permission to take out for fishing. Isaac is a fairly small lake but it is quite beautiful and scenic.
The Lake has a large number of sunfish (or blue gill) crappies, and bass. Both Ian and Amy have caught some very respectable size bass.
Everyone on the crew (except one) has been out on Isaac at least once. Even my dad, who visited last weekend, fished Isaac with me two times.
Supplementing our food budget
One great thing about fishing is the ability to supplement our food budget. On a few occasions we have kept larger sunfish and crappies to clean and eat.
We were enjoying a delicious supper of curried chick peas and green beans in the RAJ mahal, relaxing in spite of the raucous shrieking of a gaggle of pre-adolescents in our usually peaceful backyard (e.g. the alpine glory that is Andes Ski Hill). We heard the tweens erupt into rapturous cheering and looked out the window in time to see Ian emerge over the crest of the mountain on his bike, reminiscent of Gandalf, back lit by the morning sun, boldly perched atop Shadowfax. After bombing down the black diamond, Ian cruised back to the mando with a hoard of teenyboppers hot in pursuit. In the throes ecstasy, celebrating their newfound hero, the aggregation of blond children called out eager questions to this mysterious stranger: ‘Where are you from?’ ‘What’s your name?’ and yes, even, ‘can I have your autograph?’
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With the influx of work related postings, I thought I would shed some light on the day to day goings-on of the Andes’ condos.
Specifically, I will cover the activities of the 3-bedroom-condo, fondly dubbed “The Mando” (though it is now slightly inaccurate as Jennifer has been living here for several weeks now). I exclude the 2-bedroom-condo, fondly named the Raj-Mahal, not out of spite or ill-will but rather because they’re crazy and I don’t know what they do all day.
The Good:
We continue to improve our living situation by adding a mass supply of cereal, donated by the kind folks of “Sweet Retreat”, the Bed and Breakfast that Jennifer’s parents stayed in this last weekend. It seems that Post cereals gives away huge numbers of sample boxes to B+Bs everywhere, and by some good luck and friendly coercing we’ve managed to procure 144 sample-sized boxes of “Blueberry Morning” and “Cranberry Almond Crunch”. We also continue to supplement our food budget, though the pheasant supply has slowed. We continue to pursue alternative food options. I’ll leave that open to interpretation.
The Bad:
The cereal donation wasn’t entirely beneficial, and did create some negative emotions. Jennifer specifically was influenced by the free food. Who can blame her, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. And by “absolute power” I mean sample boxes of cereal, and by “corrupts absolutely” I mean causes her to blame me for its disappearance. We also seem to have run into a bought of clumsiness around the Mando. With freshly burned hands, smashed fingers and chiggered bodies, we persist. Hopefully this accident prone streak will fade in time.
The men of Denison are approaching the end of our stay here quickly, with less than 3 weeks left in Minnesota. We will continue to live interesting lives here Douglas County, and I will continue to provide the lovely details.
Here’s a photo of the measurers and datatakers at the Hegg Lake common Garden on July 26th.
(L to R) Kneeling: Amy, Amy, Jennifer. Standing: Gretel, Ian, Andy, Ruth, Julie, Josh, Rachel, Colin, Jameson. Photo by Stuart–he measured too.
The weather for measuring turned out to be much nicer than predicted: Temp 85 degrees F; dewpoint: 70 degrees F; mostly cloudy with a W wind at 13 mph. It started raining, so we packed up to leave. As we were walking out the rain stopped, so we paused to take this photo. After the photo, it started to rain again.
We measured plants efficiently. Most plants have two leaves and the longest is 8-19 cm tall. It can be very difficult to find a plant because the thick grass is about 50 cm high. The only way to find it is to measure from another Echinacea plant. The ~4000 plants are spaced on 1m apart on a 80m x 50m grid. That can seem like a vast distance between plants. Jennifer made measuring sticks 2 meters long to help us stay on line and find the plants. After finding two plants you could keep on line fairly well and go fast. If there was a missing plant or a particularly sneaky plant, then it was very easy to get disoriented. Some folks worked in pairs (one measuring, one taking data); others solo. Here’s a photos of folks at work…
i started this flog entry last year and never finished it. I’m just going to publish it as it is…
To streamline the process and get everyone on the same page i’m compiling photographs of all the different categories that we are noting in association with Echinacea plants.
Status
Can’t Find
Flowering
Basal
Staple
Dead Lvs (this year’s)
Blue Stake Only
Insects
aphids
ants
ant nest
egg sac
wht fuzzy
spittle
thorn hopper
beetle
grasshopper
leaf miner
????????????
pupa
rolled lf
Disease
yellow lf
purple lf
 
deformed lf
dead lf
Insect Damage
Nibbles
 
Holes
Wrinkles
1 lf minor
1 lf half-gone
1 lf gone
Other Damage
crisp lf
1 lf minor
1 lf half-gone
1 lf gone
1 mowed lf
1 burned tip
CGhead-info-07sub
Head Status
dud
 
no fls
broken off
crisp
bent
tilted
vertical developmnt, no hd
 
indented
normal
Insects on hd
aphids
 
ants
ant nest
white gunk
cat frass
egg sac
wht fuzzy
long-legged bug
larva
beetle
pupa
thorn hopper
spittle
grasshopper
Insect Damage
Nibbles
Disease (head)
no rays
whole hd weird
weird tufts
At last, after car trouble aborted my trip last week, I made it back out to Douglas County to join in field work with Team Echinacea. What a difference from the 2 days in late May, when Stuart, Jennifer, Andrea, Amy Mueller, and I were there searching for seedlings in the remnants! On Wed, the team numbered 12, and we made great headway measuring plants in the common garden. We were undaunted by the heat and humidity, though we did welcome every breeze. Today, we had the benefit of clouds all morning, and 13 of us measured quite a few plants at the Hegg Lake experimental site before rain, which we’d been seeing in the distance all morning, chased us in for lunch. The weather canceled field work for the afternoon, but we received instruction from Rachel about the upcoming work to evaluate species composition at her research sites, and I conferred with Stuart on analysis of pollinator visitation data before I headed back to the Twin Cities. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet the new members of the crew and working with them and look forward to the next time.
Hi all,
So I arrived up at the field site about a week and half ago to finish up monitoring flowering and help out with measuring and demo. Except for the recent death of my computer’s hard drive it has been an excellent start to my field season. As you may know flowering was about a week earlier this year with many more flowering heads than expected. I would have estimated around 800 (max) flowering heads but we had over 1,100 flowering in the common garden. Last year was also a huge flowering year (over 1,300 heads) because it was a burn year. I am excited to now have two years of flowering data on a large of plants in the common garden.
We have spent a large part of the last week I have been here measuring both in the common garden and at the hegg lake common garden. The hegg lake common garden was established back in May of 2006 to as part of my graduate research. It is about 6 miles from the main common garden on Minnesota DNR land. It has around 4,000 plants planted on a 1m X 1m grid. Today we had the entire field crew out at hegg lake measuring for a total of 13 people and measured nearly half of the entire plot just today…it was great!
Besides the field work I have been keeping myself busy in rural Minnesota by fishing (Ian has promised that I will actually know how to fish by the end of the summer), playing poker, and going to a dirt track race. In the near future I plan on flogging all non-Echinacea related activities that can be done in rural Minnesota….however now I’m tired so it will have to wait until the weekend.
Night!
Jennifer
For my most recent blog entry I’ve made a video. It is what I believe to be a Bembix wasp digging a nest. I filmed it on the backside of the Andes hill in a really dry and sandy area. I edited it down a lot. Originally there were about 24 minutes of video, but I cut a lot of the digging out as well as time in which the bee was not visible. The link for the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wskx8EKbeo0 . Make sure to have speakers on for it, but if the music isn’t your thing and you simply want to bask in the quiet glory of the wasp, watch it without sound.
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