The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

At some point, every year during pollen season, I have this thought, in part because the place where I live turns downright YELLOW with the stuff. I'm not exaggerating. There are some parts on campus where if people don't walk on it on a regular basis, it's bright yellow from pollen. I probably mentioned it last year, but I'm going to go ahead and reiterate it, for the heck of it:

Have you ever thought about the fact that, during pollen season, we're basically all walking, working, and breathing in one big, fat, giant, TREE ORGY?

Think on that the next time you go outside! XDDD

Thanks to the fact that after planting one of the studies we had a fair amount of bedding plants left, and because the prof wants to get rid of them, I came into possession of a few purslane plants today. They're very pretty--pale green succulent leaves with delicate flowers that are yellow in the center and blend into pink pink PINK. I'm not a huge lover of pink, but it goes so well with the yellow and the green, I can't help but like it. I think, since they're creepers, I'm gonna try and get them into a nice big pot so they can coalesce into one big pretty color mass. My only lamentation is that they're annuals. Foo.

While walking around with them today (as I got them kinda towards the middle of the day, and subsequently they had to accompany me on my journeys), I started having a strange thought: With the advent of trucks and other forms of transportation, and the fact that said trucks are used for transporting flowers, and simply the fact that people move flowers from one place to another, how do bees react to such an ocurrence?

I mean, I'm sure it's a very new thing to them to discover potential food sources moving around. Usually they're quite stationary. Are there rucukses in the hive? Are there discussions along the lines of "OMG the food stalks are moving they have learned the art of ambulation girls we must ADAPT. We must learn to herd the food stalks, thus preventing us from having to pick up and move our hive with them because DAMN that'd be heavy."

And how would a bee give a dance that would accurately describe a moving target? "Okay round dance NO WAIT waggle dance and it's north NO WAIT it's east and it's a mile away NO WAIT it's one and a half NO WAIT..." It would make for a very messy dance.

Although on the other hand, maybe the bee that was performing a dance describing moving flowers would cause her sisters to LAUGH at her and commit her to the bee sanatorium with padded hive cells. Hopefully her roommate wouldn't be the bee suggesting that the hive ditch the happy happy pollen collecting mindset and go carnivorous.

...this is what happens when I'm low on sleep.

OH. ALSO. ONE WEEK. ONNNNNE WEEEEEEEEEK.

Ponderance #1: I've been debating the possibility of getting a paid LJ account. I see a couple of advantages to this. One, icon goodness. Six slots is not enough to fully indulge my love for icons. Two, voiceposts. I suspect I'll be traveling a fair bit in the spring when we really get into the growing season and need to get out to places to run trials, and I'm fully expecting some of them to be overnighters. I think playing with voiceposting might be a good way to at least occupy a little time when I'm alone in my hotel room feeling lonesome. Thoughts?

Ponderance #2: I've heard a lot of good things about the series Firefly. I've read a little about it, and the concept intrigues me. I wonder, therefore, if it'd be worthwhile to try and get ahold of a copy of it so I can watch it. What did you folkses who have watched it think of it?

In other news...

You know something that's awesome? Something that's awesome is finding a shirt that I got at least seven years ago, likely more, and discovering that it still fits. It's doubly awesome because it's a really cool shirt from the University of Vienna from when my Dad went there on a business trip. I thought I had grown out of it ages ago.

Also, I've been seeing a lot of previews for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and I'm thoroughly convinced now that the movie is going to feature, among other things, Cthulhu the Pirate.

Okay, until I get through some of it, I'm not allowed to add any new books to my reading list. No more. It's gotten to be astronomical in size, and I think adding any more would be simply dangerous.

On Friday one of the library groups held their annual book sale. I love book sales like this, seeing as you can get nifty books really cheaply. I came out of it having spent $6 on 6 books. Considering I wanted to limit myself to $5, this isn't too bad. I picked up a drawing book, two Terry Pratchett books, a book of warped fairy tales, and Dante's "The Inferno". Not too shabby. I was feeling rather proud of myself for having found them there.

Today I come back to the area where the sale was held and discover that the tent is still up. Interesting. I come closer and realize that not only is the book sale going on still, but that it's been turned into a book giveaway. All the books are free. SCORE. Well, not score so much, because all I ended up doing was accquiring more books and adding to my list. It was pretty picked over (I found it interesting that the majority of the fiction books still left were mysteries), but I still managed to snag some interesting finds, among them being a couple sci-fi books, a book on landscaping vocabulary, a book on the nature of serendipity, a satire that I peeked in and featured the Buddha being annoyed at Michael, which intrigued me, and a horror-type book that initially drew me to it due to the fact that the title of the book was "MEG" in big huge letters. Yes, I am enough of a dork that mention of a certain grumpy electrician fizzy is enough to make me take a closer look at a book. I went ahead and picked it up, because from the looks of it, it essentially involves people being terrorized by a megalodon. So it's like Jurassic Park, but in the water. Sweet.

So now, not counting the drawing book and the landscaping book, I have ten books added onto my reading list. At this rate, I'll never see the light of day, reading-wise. Oh well. At least I'll have plenty of time to dive into my book list in about a week and a half.

( On that note... )