The never ending (or starting) tale of Almanzo

As we gazed upon an apple in the eye of a dying bonfire, Stuart tried to recall an old tale from Laura Ingalls Wilder, about a boy who left a whole apple in a fire in an effort to cook it. Or was it a potato…?

Today, Amy, Jame and Will first did total demography at KJs (where you can’t shift your weight without accidentally crushing another tag), hitting 99 points, then did demography at the flowering plants on the North side of Aanenson. This task kept them busy until lunch time. Meanwhile, I went to Staffanson to collect data for Lea’s aster phenology experiment. There are still two flowering Liatris plants on the East transect, with Solidago plants in all stages of flowering. At lunch, we discussed the ways that time travel can, will, and probably has already, impacted and improved research by the Echinacea Project.

Now, was that potato story the tale of Almanzo…?

We saved harvesting in experimental plots for the afternoon. Lots of plunder was taken from P1, but it seems like something is consistently beating us to the punch in P2. Today, as well as the last few times we’ve gone, rodents (or somebody else) have eaten off parts of the Echinacea heads and left them, with broken achenes, strewn about the plot. We’re trying to recover these heads so we can accurately assess the seed sets of these experimental plants as a proxy for their reproductive fitnesses, but alas, they are no longer of this world. But don’t worry too much, because the interns will think of something clever to get around this (gulp). Meanwhile, I went back to the Dermatology clinic in Alexandria (my third time this summer — a hat trick), where the doctor and I assessed phenology on my worts.

But wait, I’m still not sure if it was apples, or potatoes in that story…

After work, we went to Elk Lake and grilled some vegetables while watching high schoolers dive (fall off) the diving platform there. In what is either a testament to or indictment of our cooking, the vegetables actually turned out a lot better than anybody expected. The fare included marinated eggplant, zucchini, cauliflower, tomato, corn, leeks, onions, watermelon, cheetos, and for those who love the taste of living creature, burgers. After this, we returned to the Hjelm house, where we lit bonfires in the backyard with some remaining buckthorn and two thirds of a bottle of lighter fluid. In a fashion almost as circular as this flog post, Stuart began to tell us the story of Almanzo —

Ah, yes, there was also the tale of the milk-fed pumpkin…

Other highlights:

Talking to the four-wheel man at KJs
Stuart’s watermelon-seed spitting
Finally learning whence the wind comes. It comes from Wind Cave. In fact, that’s why it’s called wind — it’s named after the cave.

Other lowlights:

Amy’s potty-mouth at P2
Grilled watermelon
Tomorrow is Will and Jame’s last day of the field season. Next week they begin classes, although they’ll still try to skype in to help with seedling searches.