Summer School, 2011

I signed up for a great class at Merritt College this summer called "Plants of the Mediterranean." I got the thumbs up from the bosses to take the time off, negotiating use of personal vacation time to make up for the difference, paid my tuition and everything. It's taught by this professor I've been wanting to take a class with for a while now. Only thing is, the class was under-enrolled, and in this economic climate, and in California's community college system in particular, this is a recipe for disaster. The class got cancelled at the last minute. My entire summer schedule got thrown off, and in the end, I was sitting there with a great will and thirst for knowledge, but nothing to show for it. What's a girl to do?

So what I did, and I did without quite knowing it, was create my own class. More of an independent study you might say, overseen by none other than, yep, Me! I didn't start off thinking I'd be taking a class, but now that it is August, it's becoming more and more obvious that I actually am, with my own nebulous syllabus, great texts, and one of the most fantastic classrooms that a novice like myself could hope for. I haven't given my class a name, but since I am blogging about it now, I shall christen it: Plants of the Mills College Campus.

During my first semester at Merritt last fall I did a project for my Horticulture 101 class that tried to document as many plants as I could, given the time-frame, and create herbarium specimens of them. A herbarium is a collection of plants that have been collected and pressed (think: flower petals pressed between the pages of your phone book) with extra documentation and a little bit of scientificism (yes I think I just christened another concept!) thrown in. After the project was turned in, I knew I was nowhere near being satisfied with the amount of plant material I collected. One of my limitations for the original project was in being able to identify the plants I collected. I am such a newbie at plant identification it's not even funny. I could probably tell you what a rose is, and maybe a tree, but identifying and providing scientific names for plants? Uh-uh. No way. This spring I looked at all the new things popping up and not being enrolled in a plant identification class, I despaired at the thought of missing out on documenting all that I saw around me. It didn't take me long to come up with this thought: Oh, to hell with the identification part--just grab whatever you can before they all disappear again! And so.

Spring turned to Summer. Things found their way into my plant press. I bought a pair of small hand-pruners, which I dubbed my stealth-pruners, which I could pull out and to gather plants without being obvious I was pilfering the wildlife (for some reason I feel a great shame in actually being caught--by whom?--I don't know). I began to walk around during my lunch hour with a plastic bag. I carried a notebook. My eyes changed: they began to see things that used to just blend into the landscape. Flashes of color became great shining beacons of discovery. Green wasn't just green anymore--it had new and certain degrees of gradation. The bright, untouched lime green was a sure sign of something new. And there were flashes of color, pinks, oranges, and all shades of blue and purple--all these I would collect for my press, trying to gather parts of the plant that would aid in identification. Every discovery was a joy, new and undiscovered. It didn't matter what it was--if it was new to me and if it was growing on the Mills College campus, then it would be fair game for my herbarium.

True, there were a few places off-limits to me, on a moral level. For instance, it seems very unfair to go to the Botanical Garden to collect things. After all, people are lovingly cultivating the things growing there and there are signs for godsakes, telling you exactly what the plant is. That's cheating. Outright. That's like going to a zoo with a rifle and claiming to bag new species. Wrong. And there are also a few designated demonstration areas--places on campus with fabulous plants growing for the benefit of passerby who care to stop and read the lovely, detailed-filled signs describing them. These I considered clues, not entirely off limits, but shunned upon, for sure. And for the record, dear Botanical Garden Co-Ordinator, I did not collect from your demonstration areas, I merely used your beautifully identified plant species to collect from other areas on campus where the plants were growing in their natural states. Clues. Scout's honor.

Collection requires a few supplies. I am a little, uh, economically challenged by the way. To create an herbarium requires a nominal amount of equipment. I insist on purchasing archival paper to mount my specimens, as well as archival glue (I may be just an imp in the herbarium world, but I must say that these things are absolutely non-negotiable, or rather, non-reversable. I may not be the best plant presser, but at least my specimens will last into perpetuity). I splurged on cute little jewelry tags, pre-punched and strung with neat, white string (oh so tidy and beautiful in their conformity). These I would assign notes on the plants--where-collected, date, habitat information. But to press plants requires "flimsies" (aka 11 1/2" x 16 1/2" paper that the plants are actually contained in during the pressing process--these I pilfered from old copies of the school newspaper):

"Ventilators" (aka, cardboard cut from the same dimensions used in between the flimsies, sandwich style--might I say how hard it is to find cardboard without creases in the allotted area?):

And now that I am in the depths of summer, "coin envelopes" (aka seed/carpel packets). I say necessity is the mother of invention (yes, I am recycling my cliches too), and so portions of my lunch hour were dedicated to also collecting and creating these oh so necessary materials. I pride myself, not on my miserly-ness, but on my green-ness in procuring these supplies. This is recycling to the max. Talk about saving a tree for the sake of scientificism!

Paper used to pad boxes for shipping . . .

. . . invested with a few cuts, folds, and a drop of glue became . . .. . . envelopes for saving seed in!

And then comes the great task of identification. I have to say that when I was collecting, I had no hope of actually identifying any of these plants until I was enrolled in some great plant ID class at some point in the distant future. But since I have been trying to be economical about everything, I have been utilizing a great resource here on campus, available to me as an employee, namely: the Library! What a great place!! They've got all sorts of books there on every topic under the sun, and get this--they let you take them home with you--for FREE! What a concept! True, you do have to give the books back, but they let you extend the due dates over and over--for free! The mystery of this class keeps revealing itself to me. I'm not sure how I am learning how to identify plants, but as I flip through books I realize--hey, I've seen that one before! And hey, I've seen that one too. Maybe it's the freedom of not actually being enrolled in a class, or bearing the pressure of having to absorb certain information, that makes me all the more, uh, absorbent! At first I checked out books about rare wildflowers and native plants. But as I began to understand what I was seeing, I have come to a few conclusions:

1) Some of the plants that are growing so freely and readily and which are capturing my attention now are not rare, botanical jewels--they're weeds. I have to admit at this point in my botanical undertakings that I am a blunt tool. I am seeing the most gaudy, numerous and environmentally obnoxious plants.

2)Being a blunt tool is not such a bad thing. After all, being able to identify what is common in the landscape only hones my skill in what I hope to be able to identify what is uncommon. Hopefully I am just sharpening my skills by using the rougher grit first, seeing first the forest, then the trees.

3) And also, just as importantly, pressing botanical specimens meant to be preserved for all eternity is a skill that ought not to be taken upon using blunt tools. I am learning a craft here. There is technique involved in pressing delicate flowers and collecting plant material. Better to make and learn from my mistakes on common plants and weeds rather than those jewels.

4) After scratching through the weeds and invasive species and common ornamental plants, I have come upon what I consider treasures in themselves, namely, the native plants of California. While the Mills campus may not be a hotbed of plant diversity, there are some really important and interesting plants growing here. I have discovered among our native species: California buckeye, ceanothus, laurel, flannelbush, coyotebush, oaks, redwoods, toyon, elderberry, box elder, Big leaf maple, redbud, mimulus, and manzanita, to name a few. So far most of the native species I've discovered (or rather, identified), have been hardy perennials. Someday I hope to develop my eye to spy on those elusive, ephemeral annuals--those delicate little plants that pop up, flower, and return to the long dormancy that is the trademark of California flora.

But summer is reaching its end--academically anyway. School starts in a few weeks. I still have plants in my press that need to be mounted. I need to label and identify. I am giving myself a deadline: I need to be done with this season's work by the time the new semester begins. This is good. Deadlines are good. Now I just need to do the work.

There are still a few good months of heat, the hottest and most severest kind, and the curling into dormancy. Things will dry, transform into golden hues, die back; the sun will burn through the fog and lay down heavily--clumsy and masculine--upon the grasses, upon the leafed-out canopies of trees, leaving its musky scent behind in the earth. Dust settles on all things. The world sounds different then: it rustles and cracks. Seedpods break open and surrender themselves to the baked, parched earth, falling into deep sleep until the rains return again.

My 4th of July Staycation

Spent a most heavenly 4th of July weekend enjoying a mini staycation. Couldn't have asked for better weather--even though they kept threatening heat wave it didn't quite materialize and I was happy in a tank top and shorts. With three long days and my dear Coke, we set off to do some of our favorite things.

Saturday Coke dropped me off at Annie's Annuals, which some have described as a mecca for the plant world. Annie's is absolute heaven for anyone who loves plants: acres and acres of rare and unusual plants all set out and just patiently waiting for you to pick one up and take it home. I actually didn't want to go to Annie's. I'd only mentioned to Coke that they were having a massive 20% off everything sale and that my garden was already overflowing with plants and I would only get in trouble if I went there. "Nonsense!" Coke replied, and she threw me into her car, me kicking and screaming the whole way. Right before we got there, she pulled up at Starbucks, got out of the car, and handed me the keys telling me take as long as I wanted. Geeking out with the plants isn't exactly her cup of, uh, coffee, but golly gee!! What could be better than giving someone the time and space to be absolutely indulgent in their nerdihood??? Thanks Coke!

One of the great things about Annie's is that she has little signs that show what the plant will look like when it grows up, as well as other useful information. While I want to take every plant I see home, I can't. These salvia 'Hot Lips' are beautiful and while I didn't buy them, I did remember seeing them on one of my little lunchtime walks throughout the Mills Campus. I hope to grab a cutting of them soon and grow my own. Don't even get me started on my love for plants in the mint family!!This is another plant I didn't buy--the elusive Romneya coulterii. Actually it's not elusive, but they are really difficult to start and establish, but once you get them started, they really put on a show. Apparently they produce the biggest flowers of any native plant in California. I've got one started on my porch and I hope I can make it grow.While there were so many plants I salivated over and did not buy, I actually went home with a whole flat. This was more than I had set out to get, but less than I have gotten in the past. It actually took great restraint to walk out of there with just one flat. But I got some good ones!

Spent the next day in the yard getting my hands dirty, pulling out some of the old, tired plants, making room for new ones, and getting the soil ready. Look how happy the plants are:
Coke helped too, and I totally appreciate her OCD coming out in the weeding process. She must have added a whole foot to the depth of my garden--more room for plants!On the 4th of July, we went to the beach. Coke was sure that we had plenty of ono snacks. Have you ever tried wasabi mayonaise from TJ's? OMG!! Mix it in with some tuna and eat it off triscuits!! And frozen grapes? Is that a brilliant idea or little drops from heaven, or both? Yum! I swear that Coke is a snacking genius.
Here are my feet in the warm water of Alameda:And as the fireworks were blasting off into the night, Coke finished off the weekend with a grand finale of her own: Ramen!!So good! And yes, that's kim chee. Not just any kim chee--Kohala brand. Biting into that brought back a flood of memories from my youth. I was never a big kim chee eater when I was a kid, but we always had it around at dinner time, and I think as I am getting older, my taste buds are evolving. That's some good stuff!

This post has been as lazy as my weekend was. But it was the best kind of lazy. The days lasted forever, nights were long and restful, the food was bountiful and delicious. Not a care in the world. No stresses peeking out from anywhere, no lurking performances or exams or studying to do. Just pure, blissful relaxicating!

Heaven and Earth

I think that there is a little slice of heaven here on earth for all of us. It's a different place for everyone, all your own, discovered or revealed to each in different ways. It might be a park bench or a mountaintop or a kitchen table, but whatever it is, I hope that everyone finds their own place like that. I know I've found mine and it's called Point Reyes. Point Reyes is a triangular chunk of land that, on a map, appears as if it is being torn off the coast of California by the great San Andreas Fault. It's so other-worldly and beautiful that it seems that the entire weight of a continent can't hold on to it. I think of the word cleave. In one sense, cleave means to separate, to split, but in another sense, cleave may also mean to cling. I think of fingers futilely entwined--in someone's hands, in a handful of fabric of the clothing of someone who can not stay. It's a sad word, a pulling in opposite directions. It is the way the sound of a mournful song sounds beautiful, and the particular way beauty can be mournful. Maybe beauty is a form of mourning, loving that thing that is transient, fleeting, moving away.

But lucky for me, since I am a mere mortal, plate tectonics and geology are slow forces, and that bit of land I love so much will take several millennia to finally rip away and float off into the ocean, lost to the continent but born anew as an island, surrounded by vast black water that glints blindingly in the sun, a lonely place visited only by sea-birds and the occasional seal. The submerged lighthouse will exist only as a trick of light and shadow beneath the crashing waves. The roads that once criss-crossed her soft belly will be faint scars visible only from above, so that, in the slanted sunlight of an afternoon, the sky will caress and trace those faint lines on the naked flesh of the land and ask, how?, and the land may reply, distracted, her eyes looking off in the distance from where she came, Oh that? I couldn't say, it happened so long ago I can't even remember.Saturday morning we awoke early. We dressed in layers to be peeled off one by one and put back on again at the whimsy of the sun. I packed a few simple things I could find in my kitchen: a packet of crackers, cheese, a long forgotten apple that I sliced into quarter moons, a bag of trail mix. Along with dear friend Coke, we got in my car and headed off, out of the city, over the Richmond Bridge, through the small towns that dot the way to the coast.

At Point Reyes, most people stop at the visitor center, a big red barn staffed by people who love what they do. They have a little gift shop that I find completely irresistible. Yes, if heaven had a gift shop, you wouldn't be able to resist either: art prints, guidebooks, patches, bandannas, histories--all on the topic that interested you most. We stopped mainly to get a map, but I couldn't resist a slim volume on the common wildflowers of the area. With our trusty map in hand, we set off, down the road, left at the intersection, another left a little ways further. Our destination: Limantour Beach. If you want to continue with the triangle metaphor, then the base of Point Reyes lies along California's coast, tilts down a bit at a jaunty angle, and the apex reaches out into the Pacific, acrobatically balancing the famed lighthouse on its chin. Limantour lies on the southern side of the triangle. You drive through a brief forest of pine trees. At this time of year the trees were putting out their candles of new growth--one long finger sprouting up, surrounded by a couple of shorter fingers on either side. Coke said all the trees looked like they were flipping us the bird. A whole forest of them.
Limantour beach is a wide swath of sand lapped by the sea and naked save for tufts of grass in the dunes that line the shore. It was a bright day, but the air was cool, and a strong breeze blew in from the sea. Grains of sand hopped and danced, the grasses leaned, reaching and reaching, and whitecaps appeared here and there in the distance. We headed down the beach, the sand making a funny squeaking sound as we walked on it. We stopped to look at the washed up things, the shells of crabs, a glint of half-buried color. Every once in a while the wind would kick up and sting our hands and faces and try to steal our scarves away. Coke ducked into the dunes and found us a nice little spot, protected from the wind, bathed in light. It was like our own little room, grass for walls, heaven for a ceiling.

And it was heavenly, truly. The noon sun ran its fingers through the water, lighting it up all shades of blue and green. We saw something very large and very black rise up and disappear beneath the waves, twice. High above the clouds drifted lazily by, sometimes obscuring the sun long enough to reconsider a sweater that had already been shed, but not quite. We sat for a long time, enjoying the light and the ease. We breathed in the air, watched the shadows of the birds soar across the sand.

After a while, we remembered that we had left our picnic in the car, and our thoughts turned to where we should explore next and how long it would take to get there. I told Coke I didn't want to ever leave, was ready to leave my entire life behind and begin anew right there on the beach. But our bellies betray the best of our intentions, and we returned to the car where we sat in the warmth and devoured our picnic as the wind rattled and shook the car and tossed the seagulls skyward. We pulled the map out again, and I half-heartedly suggested a couple places. Part of me felt that since we had made it all the way out here that we ought to see as much as we could. Point Reyes has so much to offer, so many places to explore, but there was a tugging in my heart that wanted to stay. I suggested as much, and after little deliberation, we decided that staying would be just as nice as going somewhere else.

So, we set out again, more prepared this time, bringing the extra food and a towel and blanket. We found our way back to our little place in the dunes and spent the rest of the afternoon taking in the sunshine and enjoying this little slice of heaven. I can't wait to get back.

Thanksgiving in LA and the Way Back

I just got back from the annual Thanksgiving trip to LA. It was a good time to see family and contribute to the big Turkey Dinner. As usual I'm photo-blogging.

Here are the things I was in charge of: candied yams, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes--the mushy stuff. I forgot to add sugar to my pumpkin pie (yuck!). I marketed it as diabetic pie and the the old folks LOVED it. Spread a bit of ice-cream and cool whip on it and it actually didn't taste half bad.

I also got to see my niece, Jellybean, who of course loved Thanksgiving dinner so much she got it all over her face. She's my kind of people!

Here she is with her Dad, my little bro, who I still can't quite grasp as being a Papa, but he's a good one! She has her father's, uh, teeth!

Also found a pic of my Mom in her wedding gown. She's pretty.

And NO trip to LA would be complete without a piping hot bowl of menudo and my Mexican side:

Or biore with the bro(?):

A highlight of the trip was actually making my way back. I caught a flight down, but the trip back up was with dear friend Coke in her car, Meeps. We took our time on the great Highway 101. I usually jet back up the 5, but 101 meanders by the seaside part of the way. We found our own secret beach, after winding through suburban neighborhoods. This place wasn't even on the iphone map, which made it even better!! We spotted an unmarked staircase on the way to getting lost:

It was deliriously beautiful down there.

There was a tree that had fallen off the cliff that we wove our way into for funny pics:

And a rock I did my best to pose mermaid-like upon:

Coke just wanted to see where I came from:

Pretty, light-filled day:

And then long hours in the rain, listening to roadtrip music, and a stop at Starbucks and that M-place for french fries. All to get back to this guy, who I'm sure missed me, but isn't spilling a bean about his adventures. He just wanted to know where I'd been:

OMG! Immi is a Genius!

OMG! I was able to catch bits of Imogen Heap's webcast from her Royal Albert Hall show this week and I just can't resist the urge to share a video of her showcasing her absolute genius. The way she creates loops and layers is just jaw-dropping. She is so amazing. My electronic music hero!!

PS

And a postscript to the last post: We got a really great review for the Yoshi's show!! Read about it here.

Hell Week

Ok, maybe calling it "Hell Week" is a little extreme, especially since what I'm calling "Hell" here wasn't anything particularly hellacious--intense, ghostly and otherworldly--maybe. In the space of one week I played 3 gigs for Ghosts and Jazz, and on the other side of that was an extreme amount of work and studying that needed to be done for my horticulture classes. Two take-home exams + two in-class practicals (exams) + giant flower project all needed to be completed in the space of 3 days. I needed to put off all thoughts of horticulture to practice for the gigs, and the gigs came in between intense study of horticulture. Boy, it makes my brain tired just trying to lay all that out for you.

Preset for Matcha Night at the Asian Art Museum

First off was "Matcha" night at the Asian Art Museum. We were in a particularly large and boomy hall (I think the whole room was composed entirely out of marble or stone), pulling off our first incarnation of the show. I had to learn a batch of new versions of songs and storytelling and put it all together in time for the show with only 3 rehearsals. It was good that I've worked with that team before, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily easy. Plus it's JAZZ, which means enormous amounts of improvisation. You have to know how to just "go with it," or "feel it," which were terms that were thrown around a lot on the musical side of things. Most taiko stuff is entirely pre-conceived and staged and entirely thought out. There's not much room for "going with it" except during solos or when someone drops a bachi. Matcha night was challenging not only with the presentation of this new material, but with sound issues (we used more electricity than they were used to, which meant our monitors and sometimes Brenda's mic kept going out), and I had to rely on visuals. Janet just kept telling me: Watch Mark's foot! Just watch his foot! Which meant that I had to kind of play like a deaf person because I couldn't hear what he was playing. It was good learning experience.

Preset for 142 Throckmorton

Next was 142 Throckmorton in Marin. Did I tell you the theme of the shows was ghosts? While sound was way better at Throckmorton, we encountered technical issues DURING the show, namely, the battery pack that powered Brenda's mic flipped open at the absolute peak of the story, and she she lost power and was scrambling to find her battery and us musicians were left in the lurch. Mark was fabulous and just took a solo, and I tried to hold groove (that's where the improvisation and going with it comes in handy!!), and Janet tried to look in Brenda's costume for the battery, and all the while the rest of us just kinda looked at each other and kept the music going. Afterward Brenda spoke to "The Old Man Who Lives Upstairs" a.k.a. the set designer, and he told her there were spirits on stage who were responsible for those sorts of things. That explains a lot! Ghosts!

Preset for Yoshi's

The next day was our gig at Yoshi's. Yeah, Yoshi's San Francisco!! World-famous jazz club and host to all the greats! That was our best performance. Of course sound was not an issue here. It was just a little tight for space, but otherwise it was the best performance of the series. It was also Halloween, and we passed a yard sale on the way over. Janet couldn't resist the opportunity to get a hat for the gangster-related bingo show coming up at RCW:

Janet hitting the Halloween yard sale on the way to Yoshi's

Janet posing with yard sale treasure and demon mask

And as soon as I got home from Yoshi's, I hit the books. I was actually overwhelmed. I'd been putting it off, but the full brunt of what I had to do kind of knocked me down. At certain points in this whole process there were, yes I admit, tears and a fit of crying on the kitchen floor. (Thank you dear, sweet Coke for being there and offering your compassion and dishpan hands to the process) If cramming for taiko has taught me anything, it's learning how to completely focus and break down what feels like it would be entirely overwhelming and chewing it off into more manageable pieces. Yes, I crammed. Actually I crammed harder and was prepared to answer questions that were even more difficult than were actually asked. But darn, that horticulture is some tricky stuff, and though I did the best that I could, I didn't score any A-plusses or anything. Maybe A-territory, but eh, I did my best. Here is a picture of some fruits I gathered for floral project:

But now that it's over, it feels oh so good to be reading pleasurably and listening to music for enjoyment. Hell weeks, while feeling totally overwhelming and consuming while they are happening, are totally worth it. Can't ask more much more from life.

Ghosts & Jazz 2010 Halloween Weekend

I'm going to be performing taiko in THREE shows this week! They all feature jazz music and storytelling. Here is a description:

GHOSTS & JAZZ

This Halloween, get spooked by dramatic and haunting Japanese ghost tales performed by Brenda Wong Aoki with Emmy Award-winning Jazz composer Mark Izu, the taiko drums of Janet Koike & Kathryn Cabunoc, Anthony Brown on multiple percussion, Shoko Hikage on Koto, and Mas Koga on Saxophone and Shakuhachi.

In Japanese Noh theatre, the dead are more important than the living because the actions of the dead brought us to where we are today. Ghosts are usually upset females who won't go peacefully into the night. The Japanese believe ghosts are people who have died with an unpaid debt. An unpaid debt is passed down for generations and grows like a snowball into an avalanche. Whole families, villages, countries live under the dark cloud of an unpaid debt, because by then, nobody knows how to fix it.

Storytellers help people remember the past, and ghost stories remind us that what remains after we are dead are the consequences of our actions.

Our first show is this Thursday October 28th for the Asian Art Museum's "Matcha" series. We'll be performing 3 sets beginning at 5:30.

Next we take the show up to Marin on Saturday October 30th to perform at Throckmorton Theatre:

Ghosts and Jazz

Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu & Friends
Dramatic performance with Award-Winning Jazz

Saturday, October 30 8:00pm

$20 General Admission $15 Adult with Child, $5 Children
$23 General Day of Show

Buy tickets or call 415.383.9600

Then we come back to San Francisco to perform at Yoshi's Jazz Club. Yep, I said, Yoshi's! Yee ha, that's quite a gig! Here's the details for that:

Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu present: Ghosts & Jazz

October 31, 2010

7PM Show

$5 kids (not recommended for children under 9)

$15 adults with kids

$20 adults

» BUY TICKETS » SEND TO A FRIEND

Since you're reading my blog, you must be a friend, so you can get a discount for the Throckmorton and Yoshi's performances by using the code word "OHANA" (all caps) when purchasing tickets. I've heard that this isn't working for the Throckmorton online site, so you may want to try calling them.

Ok, and if you're not excited already, here is a video sneak peek of what we'll be doing. It's going to be awesome. Please come!

Intro to Horticulture!

Ever since I was a kid I've been interested in plants. I liked to grow stuff. When I was in high school I had a really great garden. I'd be in it for hours and hours, all weekend long, every morning before school, every evening after. And it's not like I knew what I was doing. I would just plant everything and anything. It was so alive and everything was wonderous. There was order and then there was chaos and I just remember long afternoons, listening to the radio, digging, weeding, grooming, planting, pruning.

After I left for college, I didn't have a garden any more. I pursued literature and writing. I lived in apartment complexes. I had deadlines and finals and then later a day job, life experiences, all worthwhile and not regrettable. But there's always been this smoldering interest in plants that never went away. And then one day, dear friend Coke enthusiastically approached me with a fistful of printed out course offerings from Merritt College (5 minutes from my day job). Some classes were underlined and others were asterisked and others had little drawings around them. It was thanks to her that I finally said to myself, hey, I should DO this!

So I enrolled in a couple of horticulture classes this semester! Merritt's horticulture program is absolutely amazing, particularly for being a community college. They offer courses that some 4-year universities don't even offer. I originally wanted to take the Intro 101 class and start from the basics, but it was an all-day class, and there was just no way I could swing it with my job. They've got a night version of the class that I managed to get into. I'm also taking Plant Terminology, which teaches us how to identify features about plants so that later when they actually let me touch real live plants, I will be able to know what they're talking about. I haven't really been able to dig in the dirt or prune or whatever it is they do with plants. I've just been filling my brain. It's been feeling really sponge-like lately. I am really interested and curious and still have that wet-behind-the-ears enthusiasm so I'm sure that helps. I keep putting stuff in there, and I seem to be retaining all this info, and it's not like things are getting crowded in my brain, not yet. Just fill, fill, fill. Study, memorize, read.

This whole science field is very peculiar to an English major like me. Writing and critique is so fuzzy and amorphous and perspective-driven. But science? Uh-uh. There's no arguing my way out of the corners in this field. There's a whole lot of black and white and even the grey areas come into sharp focus if you point your microscope hard enough at things. And that's something I love about it. The specificity. My terminology class is really challenging. I just got back my first exam. I scored 98.5% and I'm not happy about it. I know that most of the points and half-points (there was extra credit too) I got docked were for my carelessness. One question was to identify the surface of a leaf. There were many leaves and I just felt one, but I would have gotten the question right if I had felt the others.

But that is learning experience. I think one of the good things about learning all that other life stuff, is that you learn how to learn. Learn where you make mistakes, and to recognize them as mistakes so that you can correct them later. Take lessons from your experience. I may be answer a question incorrectly, but instead of self flagellation, I just realize, oh I was wrong because I need to take the time to observe, or to not repeat a pattern of assumption, or that with patience you'll come to understand something more deeply.

Tonight I was dissecting flowers. I've actually been dreading this. A couple weeks ago we were studying leaves, which are pretty easy compared to the complexity of flowers (not to say that leaves are simple things. Really! Go out and look at all the leaves you come across and pretty soon you will see an amazing diversity of shape and form. I never realized how many different kinds of leaves there were until I actually looked at them). I was actually scared. Yeah, that's it, now that I've said it out loud. I mean, there is so much going on in a flower, what if I can't see all the pieces? What if I come across a great expanse of unknown territory? What if I don't know what I'm looking at? What if I get it wrong? And I dissected my first flower tonight. I just said, eh, what the heck, and started hacking away at it. Our project is to dissect 16 flowers and I wanted to get an early start. When I was done with my first flower, I said to myself, well, I've got these other ones. I wasn't using them for my project, so why not just cut them all up for the heck of it without the pressure of having to document every stamen and ovary? And I did. And it was so much fun. There was flower carnage everywhere:

It was liberating.

Study and focus again. Exams and project due-dates loom. It is so weird to be a student again. But I am having a blast!

Best Birthday Ever Part II

Ok, so it's mid-September and I'm still trying to blog my best-birthday ever. I've been busy! Oh well, better late than never, right?

The weekend after my birthday, me and KB decided to go to Angel Island, a chunk of land in the San Francisco Bay. We wanted to rent bikes and explore the island. Turned out to be quite an adventure!

The adventure actually began before we got to the island. Since you need to take a ferry to get there, we decided to leave on the one ferry out of Alameda, my town, and incidentally, an island itself (though artificially so, tidal canal, my ass, cheaters). But apparently, and this I learned the hard way, there are TWO ferry stations on Alameda, a seemingly small town. The ferry terminals are on opposite sides of the island, and it was the other one that the ferry we wanted departed from. Eh, live and learn. There is more than one ferry that goes to Angel Island, and in order to catch that one, we had to drive clear up to Tiburon, where we caught the hourly, 10-minute ferry.

Once there, we immediately found the bike place, donned helmets, and were off!

Boy oh, boy were we surrounded by beauty and great weather! I'd assumed that the path would be relatively flat, but it wasn't, and good thing too, because our hard-pedaling was rewarded by breathtaking views. There were views of San Francisco and the East Bay and of the lovely Golden Gate Bridge:

The landscape on the actual island was amazing as well. There is nothing like the Bay Area in the summer. All the natives fall into dormancy, turning all golden and luscious while the trees and the deeply-rooted hold on somehow in the heat:Here I am, hamming it up, looking all bad-ass between panting and nearly dying on the uphills:There were interesting, semi-dilapidated buildings to explore. We weren't paying much attention to much besides beauty, so my facts on island history are vague. Apparently it was a military base as well as an immigration station (but I'm not sure which came first). I love old buildings, especially the falling-down kinds. Here is me thru a hole-in-the-wall:And here is more ham-age on a corroding staircase:

Ultimately, we found our way to the seashore. I wouldn't normally go bathing in the SF Bay, but we just had to stick our aching pigs in the sea:

Especially when it looked all emerald-sparkling like this:And here is a shot with the rest of the world behind me:

And of course, all good things come to an end, and let me tell you, at the end of the world there are CHEESEBURGERS! And beer. Ah, what a great day!