It’s my last day here at the Echinacea Project 2017. I learned so many new things and met many wonderful people during my time here, and I’m sad to see my time come to its conclusion. Nonetheless, we made the most of the day…or we tried to at least.
The team started the morning off doing re-checks in p1 while Stuart and I spoke about my experience and my project. He gave me some valuable tips for presenting my work, and I made it a goal to finish my project assessment within a week. Post-our meeting and morning re-checks, I headed out to p2 with Will and Wes to harvest. Sadly, many of the heads we harvested already shed many achenes, so we spent a large portion of our time at p2 picking up achenes from around the plant. For one head alone, we picked up 102 achenes! We decided since lunch time was approaching that we ought to head back and be sure to grab tweezers for the afternoon harvest work.
Lunch was filled with a fun discussion of peach-day calendars (again) and plans for the eclipse Monday. We intended to start work, but the rain persisted, so I gave a brief presentation to the group about my summer research project, and the whole team contributed valuable feedback to enhance my project. When I was finished, we had independent project time, so Tracie and Lea headed out to do vegetation analysis, Alex and Kristen worked on pinning, and I worked on creating maps for harvesting my Echinacea heads.
After work, we relaxed for a while and eventually went to the Douglas county fair where I savored fried Oreos and cheese curds while gazing at prize-winning cabbage as big as a globe.
Now, I’m all packed up and ready to leave first thing in the morning. It’s been real. It’s been fun. It’s been a real fun summer with the Echinacea Project–Definitely one for the books.
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