CLIP Week 3: 90 Is the Predominant Number
Monday began with a bit of a gloomy start at Wolf Oak Woods for a workday. Between the humidity and the intermittent drizzling, we had an
uneven ratio of sawyers to haulers. Luckily, David, TLC’s Restoration Technician, saved the day with his machine, helping to push large piles of brush to the burn piles.
By lunchtime, the day had brightened a little and we enjoyed a quick meal before finishing up piling brush for David to haul and heading back to Hennen. We learned about bumblebee identification to prepare for our bumblebee monitoring project and took a quiz to practice our identification. I (Denver) had a lovely time discussing animal consciousness and intelligence, especially in relation to bees, before we left for the day.
Tuesday was a very exciting day, beginning with monitoring at two easements. One had a historic schoolhouse on the grounds and was dedicated to preserving the oaks on the property. The other was the Anderson easement, owned by Ders Anderson, who showed us around the property and taught us a lot about the plants growing there. We were able to practice our plant identification skills and see which plants are indicative of a healthy area.
Afterward, we headed to lunch at McHenry County College. We spent some time taking online quizzes to find out which plants we are before taking a tour to learn about landscaping with native plants. We took a trip to the small farm on campus and learned about the various specialty crops grown there and how students are able to learn about regenerative farming through the program. After that, we were lucky enough to tour the greenhouse and had the opportunity to propagate our own plants to take home. We finished off the day with a short presentation about regenerative farming and some local organic farms, discussing how their practices make them organic and sustainable.
On Wednesday, 90 was a predominant number among most things. With humidity levels reaching 90 percent, and the weather being 90 degrees, being outside working in these conditions felt like we were exploring the Jurassic. Westwood Park in Woodstock is a beautiful area where I (Jazzy) went off separately with Daniel to spray crownvetch, a pretty pink flower, which is unfortunately very invasive.
Meanwhile Denver, Anthony and Kevin focused on getting rid of parsnip, an aggressive, yellow-flowered, invasive species that has a sap inside the stem that is toxic when activated by the sun. We went our separate ways, then rewarded ourselves with a walk through the site before heading over to Yonder Bluff to continue spraying crownvetch. Later in the afternoon we went back to Hennen to watch more bee monitoring videos, to prepare for our future visits to look for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee. It was nice to end the day on a more calm, air conditioned note.
Thursday was a really chill day, ironically with the worst weather of the week. We started the morning off with Kathryn, TLC’s Land Preservation Specialist, working on our research project and staying in the comfort of the TLC office while finding new literature and discussing methods for our project. After a few hours of working on the research project, we joined the rest of the team for a lovely staff appreciation day filled with food, laughter and great conversations. Although we were rained on and the wind nearly knocked us over, we had a fun time bonding with the team and getting to relax outside, which had been a nice change of pace. After the party was over, we returned to TLC to watch a video on shrub identification, and went outside to learn more about the plants that surround our workplace.
On Friday, we got straight to work at Gateway Park with some of our awesome volunteers. Lots of invasive trees and shrubs were cut down, and a lot of wild parsnip was stomped on and cut. After our workday with the volunteers was over, we scouted out the area with Daniel and David to look for areas that could provide good breaks for a growing season fire that’ll happen later this summer. We walked and saw a lot of cool plants, but even more wild parsnips that needed to be taken care of. While Jazzy and Denver wielded the mighty parsnip predators, Daniel and I (Anthony) shredded the parsnips with our brushsaws. After making a large dent in the parsnip population at Gateway, we returned to TLC to journal and head out for the weekend.
Bonus: On Sunday, the three of us interns attended Woodstock pride for some team bonding and good community vibes!
Tick Count for the Week: 6
Cumulative Tick Count: 15
Spock’s Words of Wisdom: y0omjmeadzdgh jhyuuh dsx dszxfghnb nnnnnf4sdx5
