Over the Moon
Oct. 19th, 2010 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormOne of my most interesting personality traits is my ability to get really fucking high from just being around or doing stuff I like. I know this can happen to nearly everyone, but it's an actual factor in my life quite a bit. School is doing this to me a lot lately. Now, I do pay literally with money and emotionally with stress, but at least once a week something will happen with school that makes me want to do it forever.
This week, so far, there have been two things. One of them is homework.
I may or may not have mentioned that 30% of my total grade in Ecology is tied up in a plant collection. We've been collecting plants on every walk, pressing them when we get back (sometimes after class rather than during, thus my long Fridays) and biding our time. For the assignment we mount the specimens (I'm using photograph album sheets with the clear plastic cover) along with enough other things to make identification certain, so if I need a cone or an illustration of a flower or overall plant shape I'll grab one or draw one and put that in. Then we give the information-- elevation and location and type of site collected, family name, that sort of thing. An index, a summary of family characteristics at the end, and that's that.
It took me three hours to put the ninety plants on the photograph paper, not adding any info or anything like that. It was like Christmas but better: I was unwrapping both beautiful things and presents of memories of each location of each plant I'd picked. I got to remember every moment of those wonderful classes: that little bridge on Cypress had a mossy rill where the oak fern and goldenthread mingled and they looked so similar; this was the redcedar branch I picked to hold next to yellow cedar and compare the actual look of the scales for the first time; that was the stink currant we weren't supposed to do but someone asked what it was and he told us, and I loved the smell so much I held it to my nose for the next half-hour.
Now I wake up and I'm still high from it. I have two photograph albums packed to the gills with this incredible diversity of vegetation all from around here, all that I know. I really need to find something portable that I can take with me so that when I find a piece of a plant I don't know I can slip it between pieces of paper and into some sort of minimalist press, take it home, and continue this. I don't ever want to stop this thing. I used to do it when I was little, and when I was travelling I did the same: there are sketches of plants and pressed leaves in many of my old books.
Somewhere since I've started school I've realised that botany isn't a lost art or a dead science; people still do it. I always wanted to. I can.
I need to go to work now. I have a crazy busy day-- this week is all super long days and working through the weekend, next week is all midterms and finals. I'm floaty, though. So happy.
This week, so far, there have been two things. One of them is homework.
I may or may not have mentioned that 30% of my total grade in Ecology is tied up in a plant collection. We've been collecting plants on every walk, pressing them when we get back (sometimes after class rather than during, thus my long Fridays) and biding our time. For the assignment we mount the specimens (I'm using photograph album sheets with the clear plastic cover) along with enough other things to make identification certain, so if I need a cone or an illustration of a flower or overall plant shape I'll grab one or draw one and put that in. Then we give the information-- elevation and location and type of site collected, family name, that sort of thing. An index, a summary of family characteristics at the end, and that's that.
It took me three hours to put the ninety plants on the photograph paper, not adding any info or anything like that. It was like Christmas but better: I was unwrapping both beautiful things and presents of memories of each location of each plant I'd picked. I got to remember every moment of those wonderful classes: that little bridge on Cypress had a mossy rill where the oak fern and goldenthread mingled and they looked so similar; this was the redcedar branch I picked to hold next to yellow cedar and compare the actual look of the scales for the first time; that was the stink currant we weren't supposed to do but someone asked what it was and he told us, and I loved the smell so much I held it to my nose for the next half-hour.
Now I wake up and I'm still high from it. I have two photograph albums packed to the gills with this incredible diversity of vegetation all from around here, all that I know. I really need to find something portable that I can take with me so that when I find a piece of a plant I don't know I can slip it between pieces of paper and into some sort of minimalist press, take it home, and continue this. I don't ever want to stop this thing. I used to do it when I was little, and when I was travelling I did the same: there are sketches of plants and pressed leaves in many of my old books.
Somewhere since I've started school I've realised that botany isn't a lost art or a dead science; people still do it. I always wanted to. I can.
I need to go to work now. I have a crazy busy day-- this week is all super long days and working through the weekend, next week is all midterms and finals. I'm floaty, though. So happy.
