Day 4: "Lop the Heads and Bag Them."

Today was our first full day of invasive species removal. We geared up in long-sleeved shirts, long socks, our Timberlands. We also broke in our new head nets!

Today, we mostly tackled thistles. We removed bull thistles, musk thistles, and Canada thistles. They have razor sharp thorns and are extremely difficult to remove. We got a lot of ground covered because we worked with the local interns. We also met the intern that was missing last week, Kelly.

These are the before and after pictures from one hillside that we worked on. The thistles are the tall stalks with the pinkish bulbs. They are hard to see in the first picture but they are missing in the second picture. 

We cleared many hillsides at the south end of the Lulu Lake Preserve and then had lunch.
After lunch, we cleared more thistles behind the sheds at the Lulu Lake Preserve. In order to clear the fields of thistles, we have to remove either the flower head...

...or the seed head...

...and put them in bags. Or as an intern put it, "Lop the heads and bag them." At the end of the day, we went with local intern with Ellen to dump the thistle heads in the weed pit.

For dinner, we have rice with meatballs and asparagus!