This is going to be a bit of a brief entry, but I wanted to put it here anyways. I've been patiently waiting for this season to come, and was pleasantly surprised when I was driving home from volunteer work to find that the goldenrods on the sides of the road had startd to disperse! For no particular reason other then that I like it, goldenrod has been my selected specimen to experiment with over the course of the next year or so. To truly try and familiarize myself with the art of guerilla gardening, I am going to be raising these local wildflowers by hand, preferably as much across my town as possible.

I drove back to the river I posted about previously to go and collect some goldenrod I'd previously found there, and I didn't even have to go too far from my car before finding some, as the fluffy heads were just happy to see me. I really wish I'd gotten paper bags for this instead of a plastic one, but there was nowhere locally selling any, and I wanted to get this done. Here is the plant I picked from and a good look at it.



Its hard to believe these things were the beautiful golden wildflowers I've shown previously, because they turn into fluffy seeded heads where they disperse by wind! They all start at once, and the change in scenery is pretty apparent when its time for them to spread.



Originally for the sake of collecting data for the love of the game, I planned to count every goldenrod seed I had gathered. My original estimation for how many seeds I'd get out of the small batch of flower heads I'd picked was around 2,000 or so. I gave up counting after counting to 1,751 and realizing I hadn't even cut through 1/4 of the total amount of seeds.



But now my ACTUAL and probably more likely estimate is from 7,000-10,000 goldenrod seeds. Granted, it hardly looks like a lot when in a cup. Their so tiny, I had to sort them with tweasers.



My data was pretty screwed anyways, as I repeatedly knocked over my cup and probably got it filled with a shit ton of microfibers in the process, all of which was entirely my fault as for some reason I thought it'd be a great idea to conduct science while high. And to my credit, it was fun. But the point is that it doesn't really matter lol. I was happy to be engaging with my work so closely though, and doing so gave me insight into one more thing: some of the seeds were black, and some were white, and I have NO idea what that means.



I don't know if it makes a difference, if its an indication of maturity, of plant gender [if thats even a thing], of goldenrod type, growth viability, IDFK but it might totally screw with my results, or it might not at all. Who knows. Perhaps its completely normal! But half of these seeds are different from the other half. But only time will tell through progess. I didn't look into it that deeply, but I couldn't really find anything about this either or if it even indicated anything.

I'm gonna let these little guys dry out over the course of the next 4 weeks or so, and see where to go from there. I have a lot to work with, but I am doubtful about how many will actually grow. I'm still looking into the germinating process and where to go from here, but obviously if anything comes of this further I'll share it here. :3

I've been wanting to write about these two things I did for a while, although one of them happened before I had this section up at all, so now I'm here. Recently for my environmental biology class I did some volunteer work in the local area ( granted, the local area in question is not one im very familiar with ).

On September 19th I joined a city wide event to clean a nearby river that my area generally relies on, which is sadly heavily polluted and filled with silt. It was really nice to actually work with a river, and I'd never gone along this ones shoreline up until then. I went at 9AM and worked until roughly 12PM, but was lucky to get some really nice weather and a good breeze, so it wasn't so bad. I felt pretty bad about the kinds of things I found, with most trash being twisted into growing plants or really small shards of plastic that any animal could it. It made me sad. All things considered though, the site I was assigned to wasn't that filthy, and frankly I had fun. I got a lot of cool pictures for my presentation, and found some weird stuff!







There was TONS of fish skeletons in the area. They were really big too, so we suspected they were probably carp remains. When I go there there was a hoard of vultures hanging out nearby, which I imagine might be related.



On the beach, I found a lovely log with some turkey tail mushrooms growing on it!



And everyone just loved this. I found a baby doll head in the earth, hair entangled with the roots. I won top 3 weirdest finds out of the whole event >:)



On September 30th I took the day off from class to volunteer at a local community garden. I really didn't know it even existed until this class, but truth be told it is quite the treasure. I went on a really rainy day, so I only got to work in the indoor conservatory, but it was beautiful. I spent about two hours there, although my work was objectively much less interesting. I mostly swept dead leaf litter, and pruned a singular plant, but I pruned that plant for like an hour straight because it was so overgrown, and overwhelming a lovely fern right by it.



It was a little viny plant. It wasnt invasive or anything, just a really ambitious thing that was implemented into the garden to help retain the soil indoors, but it had a stranglehold on this fern that I can't remember the name of. By the time I was done I had harvested about three entire buckets worth of biomass off this single thing. I never got an image of the aftermath sadly ( I was having too much fun ) but I felt good about what I'd done, as the fern practically had room to breath. I remember the lady working there who helped me out told me when I was done "the ferns thank you!" And that comment has really stuck with me. It makes me happy to think about.



Here's some additional photos of the conservatory itself and some cool things inside. Plus some bonus pictures of the place from an earlier visit!

A jasmine plant



I dont know what these are, but they looked like mini gingko leaves to me



This tree was one of my favorites there :3



An incredible sign

Nothing fun in particular happened today, but i went on a little bit of an adventure. I have been trying to learn about native plants of Illinois for a while now, and after spotting a beautiful patch of goldenrod off the side of the road, decided to go explore the riverside and snap photos of what i found. I'm gonna start looking up the native species' most local to me via this method. Here's some pictures. I really need to implement the gallery before im done with tonight.



FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK PRIVATE PROPERTY. I PULLED OVER ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD ONLY TO FIND SOME BULLSHIT!!!!!!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my friend had an important comparison on this i felt the need to share




it was beautiful from a distance. im a law abiding animal. lucky for me, i could go down along the riverside, and there was plenty of cool stuff there as well.



I love this river, dearly. I didn't have to far to find some more goldenrod. It is one of my most favorite plants in the area. It blooms a beautiful gold in the early fall, and then through the season disperses its seeds through the wind as it develop furry tufts. They line the edges of fields across back country roads, and i am in love with them. I want to learn about them more, and what they do. Heres all the pictures I got.




They were wonderful. I was glad to find them. Now here are a bunch of miscellanious wild plants i found, and want to learn more about. I have no idea what these are, but will be later identifying them [ probably writing it here ].

> Panicled Aster ( Native white wildflower. Seen plenty before. Bonus friend :3 )



> ??? ( Possibly non-native white wildflower. )



> ??? ( Possibly cow parsley? )



> ??? ( Cool withered plant )




> American Pokeweed / Inkberry ( Fruiting red stalk berry bush. Seen it growing in my neighbors yard. )



> ??? ( Blooming yellow wildflower )



Thats all i did today. Good day overall, happy happy.

Today had incredible weather, and I was able to wear my favorite green hoodie for the first time in months :3 But, more importantly, I had a really cool experience in a lab today where I got to test and record data about local soil on my campus.

The goal was to compare soil in a kept lawn versus soil in an actual forest.
We measured for things such as PH levels, fertility, temperature, texture, compaction, soil type, moisture, light, and the amount of organisms in found. Fortunately my partner was a self described "city-boy" and let me have the pleasure of measuring the forest soil, while he measured the lawn. The whole process was a really cool experience, and for the most part just consisted of sticking tools into the earth and measuring data, but it was really neat to witness how much can be going on in such a small area.

This was my site! My partner didn't have nearly as much fun as I did.



The forest was beautiful, and again, the weather was incredible. This is the stuff I really love doing. I love getting my hands dirty and immersing myself in the life of the world; I left the woods completely caked in dirt. It very literally grounds me, and helps me with my own dissociation.



The forest soil was smooth and mostly comprised of silt, with a PH of roughly 7.5, somewhat low moisture, moderate light, and to my own confusion below ideal fertility. For context, this was a woodland on a steep hillside dominated primarily by maples. By contrast, the lawn soil was just a slightly lower then the forest soil in all areas overall. We were at one point required to do a log flip and count how many organisms we see. I must've picked a bad log, because I did not see that many bugs! I wish I saw more.

There was lots of cool plants. I wish I'd gotten more pictures, but there were tons of mushrooms on nurselogs, lots of mosses and lichens hanging about, and I even saw a morel for the first time! Some of my peers called me over, asking me to identify a mushroom they found and if it was edible, and I expected it to be something lame but no, it was a morel!!!!!!!! I have never seen one in person before, and I was so excited I completely forgot to grab a picture of it. Furthermore, I picked it up and passed it around for everyone to smell, because it smells so much of roasted mushrooms. Wishing I took it home a little, but, one little morel wouldn't have done me much.

Here's a cool plant.



And well, thats all. The results didn't really lead to anything crazy of course, I just really enjoyed the experience. I am extremely excited about my career in the future, and being able to familiarize myself with the nature of fieldwork makes me feel more prepared. Its also just fun! I get to spend my days doing shit outdoors, and I like it. Happy happy.

Blehgh. I gotta go to bed.