Three students showed up for the field trip yesterday afternoon. Because there were so few, we were allowed to pull our cars inside the garden, which stayed open especially for us. The botanist, Laura, was not quite sure what to make of us, with our ready notebooks and pens and odd (for a botanist) questions about the plants on display.
We were impressed by the California native plant gardens, organized by region--coast, region, etc. She said that desert plants were not represented in the garden, as they were considered a completely different climate, despite the fact that they were technically well within California.
Then we looked at the South African bulb gardens and some "legacy trees" that had been planted there long ago, when the University was first built.
I took down a number of lovely common names, such as "Whistling Acacia"--this was a wonderful tree, covered with tiny yellow pompons. This particularly tree didn't whistle. The ones in the wild make a sound because they are colonized by ants that make a hollow gall through which the wind passes: hence the whistling. But the ants can't live in this climate. Too warm. And there was another South African plant, Jholla, which sounded like our native Cholla, but was a completely different sort of plant. It looked like a string of green coins, about the sound of silver dollars.
I of course forgot my camera, but my student, Roxanne, took great pictures. She just hasn't sent them to me yet. I will put some up when I get them.
4 comments:
I have a student named Roxy. If she called herself Roxanne, I could sing to her, "Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light."
I'm sorry we don't have those ants. here.
I don't know that song, I guess. I'm sorry about the ants too!
Roxanne is an amazing student. She had never ever written poems before, and the ones she turned in were absolutely horrendous the first workshop or so. But in a matter of one week, she wrote some terrific responses to the exercises I was giving. She learned to be ruthless about taking out adverbs and judgmental or "commenting" modifiers, and began to put more concrete diction and images into her work. She wrote one shaped poem I think is ready to send out. I admire her for sticking it out and taking the advice she got to heart.
I want to get out of town! I lost Beth's phone number, so I may end up going to the Zoo by myself. I can't go tomorrow since I have two students I need to meet with, but if you give me her phone number, I will call her. She gave it to me, but I lost it (predictably).
By the way, do you know how to remove a corrupted file from a program? I know what file it is, but I don't know how to get to it.
Lou,
Thanks for the unmentionable message.
Post a Comment