There was a lot of hoopla over the weather today. It got up into the lower 90s with humidity ranging from 70 – 90%. The natives tell me that this is very hot and unusual for the area. For those fellow Virginians out there, it was maybe a little bit cooler than an average day.
To beat the heat, we started at 8:00 this morning. Leah and Alex started the day catching bees at Aanenson and the Landfill, while Jennifer and Laura returned to P2 (where the P apparently stands for ‘purgatory’). The rest of us did phenology. I went with Amy and Will to our transect Staffanson, where the burned West unit was in full bloom and the unburned East unit was on its way out. We found eight new flowering plants at Staffanson today. Lea and Jame did the Northwest route, where thankfully this time nobody was left behind. Gretel and Alyson knocked out the southwest route, while Abby did the East and P1 (no other P though).
Today’s lunch was one of our more controversial ones. For one, Lea ate two pieces of watermelon instead of one. Personally, I was fuming. Instead of eating watermelon, I was forced to eat one of Will’s tiny grapes. After lunch, a few of us enjoyed cups of shirts-on coffee, while strategizing for measuring plants in P1. Today we set forth to conquer INB2 — an experiment studying the fitness of inbred plants. See picture for summary.
Relevant reading for measuring plants in P1
Amidst all the duff and dirt-colored staples, we put our meter sticks to good use measuring these crosses for an hour and a half. Mercifully, Stuart and Gretel allowed us to stop measuring early in the afternoon as we crossed the vaunted 90 degree threshold. From here, some went to Elk Lake, where I participated in an endurance water-treading contest that apparently nobody else was aware of, and still lost. The Wagenius family was also there, taking a quick dip before going to the library. Others stayed at the Hjelm House for independent project related work. We ate some great alfredo courtesy of Alyson, where the mystery ingredient was cheese curds. While eating, we were engrossed in a who-has-longer-arms tournament, where Laura pulled off several upsets but still came up just a little bit short of the crown. We’re preparing ourselves for tomorrow’s heat, turning on seemingly every appliance in the kitchen to make some ginger beverage and banana bread. We’re starting again at 8:00 tomorrow, but if today has taught us anything, it’s that it’s never too early to start sweating.
While almost any day during the summer is filled with teamwork, today was a particularly successful day for Team Echinacea 2016. This morning all of us at town hall worried that Laura might be having an allergic reaction worthy of a trip to Alexandria. We decided the best course of action was to head to the Hjelm house, let everyone on the team know what was going on, and figure out what to do from there. Jennifer generously drove Laura to Alexandria, the rest of us worked on GPSing and aphids while we waited for the sun and pollinators to come out. We regrouped later in the morning and drove out to complete another 800 combined minutes of pollinator observations in various remnants. Needless to say, before lunch we had already put a lot of teamwork into Teamwork Tuesday.
After lunch, Stuart gave us all great advice for writing successful proposals before we headed out to Hegg Lake. The rest of the afternoon was filled with measuring all of the remaining plants in p2. In pairs, we expertly worked to complete rows as efficiently as possible. At one point Stuart even exclaimed, “Now we’re cooking with gas!” By 4:15pm the team had finished measuring the entire plot, and the 50m tapes were expertly looped for future storage.
Even after work Teamwork Tuesday continued. Abby visited town hall for dinner, I picked up the CSA from Morris, Scott cooked, and Laura emerged much better after a long nap and two bowls of ice cream.
Staffanson was beautiful during pollinator observations!
In honor of World Emoji Day, I have decided to describe our day in a series of emojis: 🐱🍜🚿💻📞😴👖. For those of you who cannot see the emojis or just do not understand, we had a quiet day at Town Hall. We did very little besides talking about cats, eating, showering, laundry, chatting with old friends, flogging, sleeping, and enjoying the holiday.
In other news, Laura finished knitting a sock today, and since there are no sock emojis, I will include a picture instead.
Laura has knitted a sock! Laura is a free elf!
I think we’re all excited to get back to work tomorrow so that we will have more to do and talk about.
Hello floglanders! Happy Saturday! How you doin’???
We started off the day today with pollinator observations! We did not see too many bees, but that did not stop us from having a good ole’ time! Jennifer gave us watermelon, and it was delicious! We painted and assessed shriveling for the pollinator intraspecific pollen load diversity project.
Afterwards, we went back to town hall and ate leftovers and souls. James did not partake in this meal. They were delicious. Then I knit three quarters of a carrot colored sock with the moral support of all of town hall when I turned the heel. After I worked on the sock, we all went to Alexandria to play a rousing game of Settlers Of Catan at Will’s house. It was my first time playing and the dynamic duo of Laura and Lea won!!!! James and Will were thoroughly “put out” at our win because they were self-proclaimed protegees. Well, maybe they did win, but I might not want to admit it. Currently, we are watching the Big Lebowski. Hopefully, Will does not fall asleep because apparently he has never made it through 1/10th of the whole movie. He is actually letting us watch the movie in his room. There is a rug here that really “ties the room together”. (quote from currently being watched movie).
Also, Leah taught us some Spanish in the Taco Bell drive through.
This summer, I will be examining the effects of removing buckthorn, a shrub that is invasive to Minnesota, on the edges of a bog near the Hjelm House. I am interested in seeing how removing buckthorn impacts the native plants, native invertebrates, soil quality, and exotic earthworm population. To learn more about my project, feel free to read my proposal! I’ve already been working on my project quite a bit and I can’t wait to get the final data and results!
Alyson’s Awesome Proposal – Click here to read the most exciting proposal you’ve ever read, probably.
Here’s a sneak peak of the bog that I will be studying this summer! Isn’t it pretty?!
Spotted this Andrena having a snack while doing phenology this morning
Today was a good day, beginning with phenology in the morning. I went to the northwest remnant sites with Amy. Although the morning was mostly uneventful, we did encounter the sheriff of Grant County as we were pulling over to check on the plants at Northwest of Landfill. He asked if he could offer us any help, but when we told him that we were studying plants he said that we were on our own! Oh well. We finished up and returned to the Hjelm House for lunch.
At lunch, we spent a while talking about P2 and measuring in the experimental plots. There are 8 experimental plots, so this will be a big job for the rest of the summer. Fortunately, we’ve already measured P8 (plot 8) when we measured the q2 and q3 seedlings. The process for measuring adult plants is pretty similar to what we did earlier in the summer. We went out to p2 this afternoon and worked in pairs to measure the plants there. We work in teams as we go through the rows, position by position. We still have a ways to go, but we made a good dent today.
Since it was rainy earlier this week, those of us living at Town Hall will head out for a quick round of pollinator observations tomorrow morning. I’m heading to bed now so that I will be ready to go then!
We began this morning at 8:30 am with most of the team heading out to observe pollinators, however no pollinators were seen because it was so cold and rainy! While the rest of the team was watching for pollinators Abby and I worked on crossing in the west unit of the Staffanson Prairie preserve as part of the compatibility experiment! When it started to rain the team gave up on pollinators but, Will, who very generously drove us to Staffanson came and helped us finish the crossing so that we didn’t have to sit out in the rain by ourselves.
Abby is worried about the aphids drowning in the rain so she retreats into her shell.
After failing to see any pollinators this morning the team went out to P1 to work on the aphid exclusion and addition experiment. Under the strict guidance of Abby, our resident aphid expert, we quickly finished adding and removing aphids from the 70 plants that are part of the experiment!
Will is waiting to start playing Catan, he is so excited.
We had plans to measure the plants in P2 in the afternoon but the cold rainy weather would have made that difficult. Stuart gave us the afternoon off to work on proposals and relax; Will, James, Lea and I decided to focus on the relaxation part and play a friendly game of Settlers of Catan. James and I consider ourselves to be experts at this game, as we have played it many times.
“I have memorized the rule book so you don’t need to read it Will” – James 2016
The game lasted a long time and Lea did a really good job of stealing all of Will’s brick cards. In the end Will narrowly beat me. I am pretty salty about the whole ordeal because I really like to win, but Will is just really good at board games I guess.
We did phenology in the remnants and the experimental plots this morning. I think we are already past peak flowering! *sigh* It goes by so fast. In the afternoon, most of us went to P2 to do some weeding and phenologizing. Other team members caught pollinators and worked on doing crosses.
I have been looking forward to today all week, however, not because of fieldwork, but because it was wing nite at Angelina’s Restaurant in Alexandria. Many members of Team Echinacea came and ate a lot of wings, including James, who ate 4lbs of wings all by himself! James reports feeling really good about himself afterwards. Evidence below:
James “Clean Plate Club” Eckhardt
I had to take my leftovers home in a styrofoam box. In other news, Scott met his baby doppleganger at the restaurant! See picture below:
Present Scott (in foreground, at left) and Past Scott (in background, at right)
I will leave you with a video that encapsulates our dining experience:
Many of you may not have paid too much attention to the forecast for Kensington, Minnesota this morning, but it was a doozy. I have included a very slightly adapted version of the local forecast from this morning.
Hazardous weather statement:
Town hall forecast office precipitable water analysis.
Locally violent and drenching thunderstorms will take aim at the north-central United States into Monday night. Some communities from the eastern part of the Dakotas to Minnesota and western Wisconsin, southward to Kansas and Missouri will be in the crosshairs of damaging storms. According to local amateur meteorologist, Stuart Wagenius, low level jetstream activity may be firing thunderstorms towards Douglas County, Minnesota. The major threat of these storms will be delayed work, 10:00 AM at the latest, cloud to prairie fragment lighting and musty winds. “A few cities that will have to be on guard [to defend themselves from jets firing thunderstorms] in the afternoon and evening include [Kensington, Hoffman], Minneapolis, Omaha, Nebraska [and a few other extraneous metropolises],” AccuWeather Meteorologist Jake Sojda said.
Hour by hour forecast:
10:00 AM. Rain and gusty winds.
11:00 AM. Surprise thunderstorms possible! While monitoring phenology, Team Echinacea members are advised to take cover in their vehicles before their study site is struck by lightning.
12:00 PM. Looks like it might rain, but not enough to keep you in. Precipitable rain is 2 inches. Who knows what that means; we just like the sound of the word precipitable.
1:00 PM. Is that rain on the horizon? Anyone outdoors advised to speed up phenology data collection without losing any accuracy.
2:00 PM. That was rain on the horizon. Might as well eat lunch until the rain stops again.
3:00 PM. Slight chance of rain and cloudy. Winds gusting to over 35 mph from the east, but they’ll feel much faster than that when you have to hold a bag of flags, a visor, a pen and a clipboard with many maps.
4:00 PM. Cloudy and dank.
5:00 PM. Who knows. It doesn’t matter anymore because everyone will be working on dinner and proposals anyway.
The K-town dentists are hard at work on Laura’s wisdom teeth. Once we find some string and a door we’ll be in business.
The work day started at 8am, with the team scattering to different remnants to capture pollinators in action. I was at East Elk Lake Road and decided the first plant I would visit might be the beast in the road. I assessed phenology on this plant yesterday, I believe it had 7 heads, was practically in the lane, and right before the bend in Elk Lake Road that leads to KJs. This plant has flowered many times in the course of the Echinacea project, including last year- it’s current tag number 20704. I guess I figured I’d start the morning of videos with a potentially challenging plant. But when I walked down the road with my bucket, little did I know it had been mowed since yesterday morning!
RIP to this year’s heads!
After a moment of silence for the mowed plant, literally cut down in the prime of its reproductive effort, I moved on to my first video.
“Quiet, roll ’em”
Some pollinators chose to relax on my pants, instead of nearby plants, even though I told them about the Echinacea only a meter away!
No pollen here!
Meanwhile, Amy worked on her compatibility experiment and Laura collected pollinators for her project. We headed home around 11:30 although work was far from over for the day. Amy headed back out in my car to continue her work at Staffanson. Scott, Lea, Laura, and Alex all stayed a little longer to work on their various projects, and the rest of us started to work on our proposals. Alex made a wonderful dinner of carrot-ginger soup and homemade bread after which we all split ways to keep working on our proposals. At dinner we decided that tomorrow we would do something fun in Alex and perhaps even make breakfast for dinner. Overall, we had a positive and productive day of pollinators and proposals! Stay tuned for those proposals which will be on the flog sometime next week.
