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Today was my last day of work for this summer. It was also Hattie and Per’s last days. They go back to school next week! It’s crazy how much this summer has flown by! To inaugurate my last day we started with rechecking demography records. We then had our last lunch with the Wagenius’ as a whole. They are headed off towards Chicago where Gretel, Hattie, and Per will be staying for the fall (Gretel will be back and forth). The afternoon became warmer and the sky cleared up. The rest of the team got trained in on how to harvest Echinacea heads in P1. I stayed behind to finish up some work on my independent project. At the end of the day Abby and Will left without saying goodbye (I wish you both good luck in the new school year and hope that excellent times come your way). But out biggest trouble was figuring out what to do with Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky. We debated whether to let him go on the grape vine outside the Hjelm house or to bring him back to town hall. We ultimately decided to let Ricarda/Ricardo/Erica/Rica/Ric/Rick/Richard/Ricky go on the grape vine outside of the Hjelm house.
We then headed home for our usual Friday night pizza making session! We made wonderful veggie, sausage and green pepper, and pineapple pizzas! We then went outside to watch the sunset through the smoke from the wildfires in Montana and Washington. The sun was a beautiful orb of orange as it set over the soybean fields to the west of K-town. Then someone put Kent in the shower.
 Well hello there Kent!
While just last Friday we were straining under the heat and humidity and dripping sweat onto our visors as we pushed through field work, today was one of the coldest days of the summer so far and had us bundled up in our flannels, rain coats, and wool socks.
We started off the frigid morning going over the demography protocol before all heading out as a team to Steven’s Approach and Aanenson to give it a try. A newly-organized g3 helped things run smoothly as we got ready to head out. (As promised in yesterday’s post, here’s a picture featuring g3 as it’s never been seen before!)
 Ben revels in the beauty that is g3. Tubs are now labeled and color-coded. Out in the field, Stuart made sure that we got some “active searching” practice as we tried to find plants that had been missed back in the days of phenology (i.e. a couple weeks ago). After just two sites, greying skies, menacing rain, and numb hands sent us back to the Hjelm house just in time for a chilly lunch on the porch featuring steaming mugs of tea and chocolate chip zucchini cookies (baked by Ali and Amy).
 Brrrrr. Warm cups of tea at lunch helped remedy the cold. Note that Danny broke out his hat! The storm picked up in the afternoon and left us stationed at the Hjelm house for the rest of the day getting some computer work done for our independent projects. After a summer spent applying our aphid addition and exclusion treatments, Abby and I were excited to start looking over our data set and get to work analyzing it! More updates to come.
 Ali and Ben take a look at the results of Ben’s seed harvesting out at Hegg Lake.
On our day off, some members of Team Echinacea went up to Glendalough state park to camp for a night. It was a great weekend because lots of things could have gone wrong, but we were super lucky and almost nothing did! For example, one of our tents didn’t have a rainfly, but then Stuart and Gretel let us borrow one of theirs! Thanks Stuart and Gretel! But we didn’t even end up sleeping in it—more about that later!! We also didn’t have a reservation, but it turned out that there was a no-show at a campsite, so we got that one! The lady at the park office told us that if a person named Nathan showed up, we would have to tell him that we had taken his campsite, but fortunately Nathan never showed up. Confrontation avoided! It was a canoe-in site, but lacking a canoe, we hiked there. Thanks for carrying the cooler, Gina!
We ate sandwiches and then went to the water. We decided to try to swim across the lake even though we agreed we weren’t very good at estimating distance across water. Then we swam across the lake! The water was really nice and it only took 45 minutes. We saw a loon and a bald eagle while we were swimming. Katherine and Gina walked to meet us at the beach on the other side. Next, we all spent a good 10-15 minutes giggling in the waves by the shore because we were happy and probably a little dehydrated. Then we realized that the beach we were on was being rented out for a family reunion and everyone around us was probably related and wondering who the heck we were, especially because they would have been able to see us bobbing across the lake for the past half hour! Thanks for sharing the beach, Will family!
Intrepid swimmers bob along swimmingly Next we walked back to our campsite. We built a fire in about 15 minutes which Katherine thought was kind of a while, but many of the rest us agreed was “about as fast as we had ever started a fire before.” We had corn and hot dogs and took a lot of pictures of the fire, hot dogs, and the sunset (see example below).
See similar pic on Gina’s instagram Once it got dark we started looking at the stars and were doing that when two park rangers showed up. “Hey folks just wanted to let you know that your tents are a little bit off the tent pad and also there is a storm a-brewing in North Dakota that has hurricane-force winds and golf-ball sized hail and it’s heading this way,” was approximately what he said. We mumbled responses and then he said, “Tell you what, the folks at the yurt campsite vacated the premises early so I’ll go ahead and leave that unlocked so you can go there if things get dicey.” So we said, “Thanks officer!” and after several minutes of discussion we decided that the opportunity to sleep in a yurt was too good to pass up, especially with the possibility of inclement weather. So then we got to sleep in the yurt and it was warm and dry which was nice because it sounded like a pretty gnarly storm!
The yurt was very sturdy and well furnished. We woke up and took some more pics (see below). Next we ate breakfast at a nice little place in Battle Lake, which we all agreed was “a really cute town.” Then Ali drove us home and we made it back to Town Hall safe and sound! What a great and lucky weekend!
Da yurt!
Rainy weather covered the research area this morning, so the team worked on their independent projects, entering data, working on plant identification, web resources, and learning R! At 11 Stuart gave us all a lesson in statistics, that involved analyzing Taylor’s data using a linear model and an ANOVA test. The analysis gave some interesting results!
After lunch the whole team headed out to P2 at Hegg lake to pull thistles. We pulled hundreds of thistles, maybe even thousands.
Abby, Ali, and Amy pull thistles in p2  Katherine in pain as she holds a bundle of thistles waiting for me to take a picture After an hour or two storm clouds started to roll in over Kensington, headed in our direction. We decided to call it a day before we got to wet.
Storm Clouds headed towards us
 Team Echinacea shows off the many troll-phies and ribbons earned at the Flekke-5k! Today was a winning day for Team Echinacea! Ten members of the crew (including Hattie and Per) got up early to run the 5k at the annual Elbow Lake Scandinavian festival with the catchy name “Flekkefest.” The humidity let up for us and the morning was a cloudless, cool, and crisp one as we assembled for the race. Approaching the registration table we found that Abby’s dad, who was in charge of organizing the race, had made us a “Welcome Team Echinacea” sign. The sign must have been some encouragement; five kilometers later we had quite a few trophies under our belts. Our very own Amy got first place overall for women! Between the rest of us we also earned second and fourth for women, as well as a few wins for our respective age groups. My favorite part about the race was that they gave out troll trophies–which we dubbed “trollphies” for short.
 Amy’s troll-phy for first place! Maybe most exciting of all, however, every participant of the race got a free book coupon for the book sale going on downtown. We spent the next hour after the race finding used book gems (like the ones below), before enjoying an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at a small place across the street.
 Some treasures picked up at the Flekkefest used book sale. Home, well-fed, and showered, we proceeded lazily with the rest of the day at Town Hall. Curled up with our new (old) books, a few of us ended up napping–not surprising given that our day started at 6am!
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 My beautiful bracts!  Ben, Gina, & Matt practice precise painting Today was another successful day with the team! We had a morning filled with phenology at half of the sites and later everyone divided to get many things accomplished. After lunch, some of us practiced painting the bracts of Echinacea; this wasn’t too hard, it was actually very pleasant. Using toothpicks, we had to be sure to paint the tops of bracts as well as the bottom while making sure not to get paint on the florets or apply too much.
I see absolutely nothing wrong here. Here, Lea and I were at p2 collecting phenology data in the afternoon. There are 80 rows in this plot and it took us almost the whole day to get the job done! I’m from the south and it honestly takes a lot for me to confess that a place is hot, but the way the sun was blazing today, I wasn’t sure if I’d make it out of the prairie to deliver this flog post to you! It was so “warm” today I was seeing double headed Echinacea…….. sheesh.
To conclude a week full of accomplishments, Stuart sliced up the best watermelon ever. One shouldn’t argue this watermelon’s caliber; I know this was the best watermelon ever because it replenished all the sense I lost in p2 today. I’d say that everyone else enjoyed this glorious melon as well! Today was a good Friday!
Watermelon after work!
Flowering Echinacea take no holiday! Half of the Team got up early on this Saturday morning and headed out into the field to make sure we stay on top of the fast-paced world of phenology. With the crew re-assembled back at the Town Hall for the afternoon, the rest of the day proceeded lazily–fitting for the humid weather and the holiday at hand. Munching on the delicious leftovers from yesterday’s picnic, reading, and napping in turn, we passed a couple hours before heading over to Elk Lake once again. (The small lake-side beach has become a favorite haunt for the group!) Lea clearly still had Echinacea on her mind and made this awesome watercolor. (Note the pollen! How long do you think this plant has been flowering?)
Lea’s watercolor of Echinacea! Oobleck: one part water, two parts corn starch, one part magic. After returning home we had some old-school, science-themed fun with “oobleck”–a miraculous mix of water and corn starch yielding a substance that’s somehow both a solid and liquid. We finished off the night with a delicious (and festive) s’mores pie baked by Amy.
Happy Fourth of July on behalf of Team Echinacea!
 S’mores pie!
Today was a great day! We did some flagging in a few plots and also got a chance to meet Jennifer Ison via videochat. We also got a chance to speak with Stuart regarding our independent projects… In the midst of waiting for our appointments with Stuart, Ali was visited by this butterfly. It’s a Pearl Crescent Butterfly (Phyciodes tharos). Soon it’ll be stopping at some flowering Echinacea, but today we definitely enjoyed its visit on Ali.
On Tuesday we harvested 3 bags of heads from P1, 1 bag and 2 full egg cartons from P2
Today we trekked or “stalk whacked” through a corn field behind P1 to visit the site Kruzmarks
Where we found a sad looking Echinacea just peeking out from between blades of brome grass
where there was an interesting amalgamation of “ecosystems”… native prairie remnants, a pot hole, non-native conifer forest, and a monoculture of corn
Finally, we were able to finish out the day (Stuart’s last this season) at Staffenson. It was beautiful. White aster is blooming along with showy goldenrod and helianthus. Purple asters and gentians have maintained the purple hue as liatris is finishing blossoming.
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