Convention Continued

After the organic dairy tour, our convention had dinner together. In a group of about two hundred, the organizer asked who the vegetarians were. I and one other person raised our hands. We had, by far, the better meal. Wow, it was delicious. Baked squash, peppers, onions and tomatoes in a layered pile with sauce and cheese - it was heavenly. The others had dry chicken, wild rice, green beans and rolls. After dinner we had a speaker who talked about Minnesota history while illustrating on rolls of paper tacked to the wall. He drew the head and shoulders of Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Josiah Snelling, Dakota and Sioux men plus birds, the flour mills, and other points of interest. I had been up since 5 a.m. and was ready for bed after that. We stayed in Independence Hall - a dorm. I shared a room with one person and a bathroom with about 30 women. We had to wait turns for the shower. I am lucky in that I can sleep pretty well when I am exhausted but I am glad I don't have to live in a dorm 9 months of the year. In the morning we had a bird walk at 7. We didn't see much on campus - bluebirds, red winged blackbirds, grackle, brown headed cowbirds, meadowlark, mourning doves and chipping sparrows. The highlight was watching a pair of wood ducks fly in and land in a tree. After breakfast, my class was in photography. I have a little camera I bought a couple years ago before my trip to Africa. I never knew how much it could do until I took this class. I have a timer on my camera that I never found before. I can set it for 10 seconds or 2 seconds. I was told we should always use the timer when taking photos because you can avoid the blurriness that comes when you press down on the button. That makes sense. I have a "P" setting on my camera. I can adjust the flash, the exposure, the length of time the shutter is open, and the F-stop. I never knew any of that stuff. My head was spinning with information by the end of the class but I think my pictures will improve because of the knowledge I gained. After lunch we went on a field trip in a school bus. I don't go on school buses often but when I did, I used city school buses. Situations must be different in the country than in the city. Look at the warning sign posted on the bus. If you can't read it, it says, "No Sunflower Seeds On This Bus." Seriously, sunflower seeds are the biggest worry? We saw fields on the way. Some fields had darker richer soil and some had lighter soil. The darker soil is where soybeans grew last year and are now planted in corn. The lighter fields are where corn grew last year and are now planted in soybeans. Soybean roots have nodules that capture nitrogen and add it to the soil and improve the soil. On our field trip we went to a field - the Chippewa prairie. We were sent out on the prairie and given a list of plants to find. Each plant was marked with a numbered flag to make it easier on us. We had the option to try and identify the plants without using the answer key. Yeah, no. I could identify hoary puccoon and wild rose but did not know the other 20 species on the list. We had a lot of fun going from flag to flag and looking at the plants on the tall grass prairie. We were near a pond where a chorus frog was chirping away. We found a leopard frog in the grass and a skink under a rock. I saw a bobolink on the prairie - wow, that is a beautiful bird. Here is a photo I took of a wildflower called prairie smoke. Our bus took us to the Stevens County museum. Passengers collected woodticks and threw them out the window along the way. The museum is housed in a former Carnegie Library and the architecture has been restored and made handicap accessible - no easy feat. After the museum we went to the food coop in Morris. Our final stop was a US Fish and Wildlife plot. We went on an auto tour (in a bus) with a US Fish and Wildlife biologist who showed us the sights. The wind had been blowing strong all day. We had rain in the morning and cloudy skies until late afternoon. The wind was exhausting. After dinner we had another speaker who talked about Minnesota weather and global warming. I had signed up for a star gazing class from 9 to 10 p.m. but the skies were overcast and my eyes couldn't stay open anymore so I went to bed.