Moody Meow

I bought my plane tickets for Seton Hill, and applied for Financial Aid. I even rented a car. . It cost more for the car than the flight. How fucked up is that? It’s more expensive to fart around PA for five days than to fly up there? That’s just obscene. I get back home on June 24th. We move the following weekend. It’s getting close, kids!

The Saturday Botany lab left me exhausted. We traipsed through a preserve in Volusia county, and I feel like a jerk because I forgot the name. It was hot — damn hot, and I ran out of water half way through. But, this trip, the last for our class, really solidified my love for cypress trees. You should have heard them, the music in their leaves, as the beginning of a front rolled in. When I see their knees, I look up, and often trip myself, because I want to see the pale bark and cheery, bushy branches Dr. Grey lectured about a well (it monitors water beneath the wetland), and the dried up wetland we stood in. I walked off a ways, ignored the talking, and just listened. I haven’t heard that kind of music since the hurricanes. I tried to keep up my enthusiasm, to continue taking notes, and pictures — but I just got tired. I made it home before 2 after taking a wrong turn into Longwood. I have no sense of direction. This is not a good sign for my PA trip. We saw a baby gopher tortoise! Lauren, a classmate, almost stepped on the little thing. Dr. Grey actually smiled when he picked it up, and giggled when we talked about their history and habitat. I think it made his day.

I feel pretty lost in Botany. Just when I think I have a handle on the terminology, I blank out and forget too much. We have a lab practical on Wednesday that is scaring the shit out of me. There will be twenty stations with a specimen and we will have to identify it - he uses multiple choice, matching, true/false and fill-in-the-blank. I’m trying not to be freaked out, but it’s got my stomach churning.

D and I walked from the Cady Way Trail near his work down a strip of land that paralleled the canal. I needed flowers for my Botany project. A man, walking a bicycle down a thin path between a wooded area and a fence, disappeared in the green shrubbery. I noticed bottles and bits of clothing, refuse from the unseen. I felt like I was intruding, like I shouldn’t gaze into the grass and shrubs in search for a good bit of color. But I needed flowers. I found beautiful ones, delicate cup-shaped, pink and white. I hid my shame in my bag, next to the clippers and my notebook. Their garden’s fruit and color - I stole it for school. Yes, they are “trespassing” on public land, and their shelters are unseemly, but it seemed romantic that they lived in a green world, full of flowers and leaves and wind, and that they could call it home, perhaps without much disturbance. I don’t know how they coped with that rain on Sunday. It was a washout. Maybe their homes didn’t dry as fast, but I didn’t want to take too many flowers from them. They deserved at least that much — also, I wanted to take a picture of one of the “homes” because I thought it was beautiful, but I didn’t. It would have been intrusive. I hope their trees love them, I really do.

I hate it when people can’t pick up their damn feet when they walk. Thought I would share.

I finished my Humanities Portfolio, I turn it in today.

There’s more to say, but I leave you with a tree, one that sang to me on Saturday.