“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Bertrand Russell

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.” – Franz Kafka

“Time’s fun when you’re having flies!” – Kermit the Frog

Heyyo! Not much to report here on the flog this sunday. As often as we choose to work, today we did not. Here at Andes, we have been taking advantage of our time off. Sleeping in, breakfast begins around 10:30 (for me). We’ve become fond of the pesto-egg, which is exactly what it sounds like. Frequenting our dining room table are other Andes staples, like hash brown patties, raisin-bran in oat milk, and strawberry toaster tarts. If you’re like me, you’ll have too much coffee just to sit around, while Jo prefers an iced chai latte. Sadly, we missed Sophia for most of the day, as she took a day trip to sunny St. Cloud, Minnesota to run a few errands that even the metropolis of Alexandria could not fulfill. Geena and I took a trip to O’Reilly’s auto parts to buy motor oil (for my car) and to the liquor store, to buy Everclear (for the yellow pan-trap project, not consumption). Jo stayed home, found a bird (dead) and napped. The rest of the day consisted of youtube videos about ants, walmart donuts, and laying on the couch. We took some time to start the process of bleaching a deer skull, found and donated by Brittany, pictured below. Jo made some Penne alla Vodka, a recipe by GiGi Hadid, in which we used farfalle rather than penne. It was delicious. At night, we watched Mad Psycho and discussed chronic wasting disease, which I started to feel like I could be developing by lying about all day. Sophia, as I write this, is making mac and cheese for our 4th of July potluck feast tomorrow, and I’m beginning to get hungry again. I am excited to canoe tomorrow, equally excited for phenology. This day of rest has been much needed, however one day is enough.

Today marked the second day that the team found Echinacea in flower! As we continue our hard work taking demo and survey on all of the plants that seem like they are going to flower this summer, we’re also learning what we’ll be looking for when we start phenology shortly.

After lunch we had the best task of the day: Demoing and decapitating Echinacea pallida – which is a non-native species that we don’t want cross pollinating our neighboring experimental plots. We finally got to figure out why we’re not supposed to twist the Echinacea heads: they really do cause the head to fall off.

Lastly, Stuart hosted team dinner at the Hjelm house, and after having some great burritos, Jared got to use his fire-starting skills to create a bonfire for the team (the team just used our foraging skills to find the best marshmallow sticks).

When we arrived at Hjelm in the morning we were informed that the Elk Lake House had declared today Big Hat Friday! It was a hot day without a cloud in the sky, so the big hats were definitely appropriate.

The team split in half to do our morning tasks. One group went to finish up some flagging in the experimental plots to help us out later on in the summer, and my group went out searching for flowering echinacea. We headed out to Riley and East Riley to begin our search. Once we got there Jared gave us all a great demonstration on how to set yourself up to find the most echinacea. The key is to look silly while doing it! We found some to flag, but the bright sun certainly was not making it easy on us and I have a feeling that when we visit again there will be more plants to spot.

Before lunch we had a presentation from Jennifer Ison about her projects in p2 and then the whole team got to share short ABT’s about what we are interested in doing this field season. Then we were all off to p10 to flag and measure for the afternoon. Unfortunately, the flagging didn’t go as fast as we expected but we got it done and most of the team got their first introduction into measuring! It was a great finish to a fantastic first week!