My beef with wildflowers.

I never really liked flowers. Call me crazy, but it's true.  For the longest time, I thought I simply disliked them in a dating sense- as in a don't-ever-get-me-flowers-because-anything-that-dies-within-a-couple-days-isn't-worth the money type of way. But I've found (especially after having spent the past 2 weeks observing and attempting to identify them) that it's not just that.

I just don't like 'em.

The truth is: they all look so damn frail. Their true identity is always a, "maybe it's this, but it could be.." And half the time they don't smell too great.

The truth: all three of those qualities bug me. 

For starters, I like to look at something sturdy - not something that's missing petals because the wind blew too hard.  I guess you could say that the way I feel about botany is the way I feel about most all things in life: I like firm handshakes, well-grounded people, strong coffee, black tea, waterproof mascara and non-wilted petals. I just do. I feel like all the flowers we saw at the LLL were either missing half their petals or looked like a sorority girl the morning after senior formal. And then she ran a marathon. Like I said, I don't like it.

And then there's the whole identity crisis thing. Dr. T told us that sometimes she'll come out to the LLL with her botanist friends and they'll get into these long arguments about species identification.  Long arguments? In the biology classes I grew up in, we presented our points and then someone conceded. As in there was a right answer, and if it wasn't wholly evident, then the species was probably a hybrid. But nevertheless, there were no maybes. It was this or this: end of story.  Our class went back and forth arguing about whether a flower was a scarlet mallow or an orange mallow.  Naturally I look towards the professor for her final judgment.. You can imagine how horrified I was when she said something along the lines of the answer being arguable. Arguable? Yeah no, that word is associated with grey in my mind, and I'm more of a black and white typa girl.

A flower whose name I never figured out:

Don't judge me on this last point (although I know it's superficial), but when I smell a wildflower, I expect a happy scent. That was not the case with the flowers. You can blame my generation for my false expectations and superficiality.. We've been raised on Bath & Body Works. We expect a juniper breeze or white fresh cotton linen or floral tropical breeze scents when we put a flower to our noses... the ones that sound as pretty (albeit cheesy) as they smell.  You can imagine my surprise when I was trying to identify a member of the Aster family and the description was, "bitterly aromatic." For some reason I don't feel like that's a scent BBW covers... call me superficial, but skunks are meant to smell bad --- flowers are meant to smell like... well.. flowers.

a scarlet mallow... or was it an orange mallow?

i think this makes us tree huggers...

The past two weeks, my fieldcraft class had the pleasure of doing a little community service for the LLL*. Our job was to plant native species of trees in designated areas all over the site. Now I've used a shovel before, but I've certainly never planted a real tree ---- I was right in guessing that it would be an interesting first experience.

Within minutes of beginning planting, I could already tell that the day might be a battle of the sexes. For starters, the learning tree --- the one the class all helped to bury, was actually planted by all of the men in the class.  As it is at a cocktail party, the women congregated off to one side, and the men to another (in this case: the side where dirt was being hardily shoveled). But the women-sitting-around-chatting while the men showed off their testosterone with fire-rakes and shovels was quickly dissolved.  We split off into groups, and it was every student for themselves after that.

My tree planting group was the self-named, "Girls Team" and we were a pretty efficient bunch of diggers and buriers.  Our mascot, Nic, tilled up the soil for us, we dug in, he tilled a little more, we dug again, fit the tree in, covered it up, made a dirt halo surrounding it, and then watered the hell out of our new Hack or Soapberry tree.  We were a pretty mean group of tree planters for a Girls Team.. and Nic. Our efficiency, however, would not have been possible without sarcasm, "That's What She Said" jokes, and Nic's angelic serenading abilities for fuel.  We worked hard and played hard.

On another note, I would just like to say how much I enjoyed one of our professor's reasons for why we should be enthusiastic about planting trees for the LLL.  She brought up the point that one day many years from now we could come back with our children and show them the trees we planted.  I like this idea.  Mainly because I kind of like the sound of having a family and raising children in this area.  Planting the trees was almost symbolic in a way of getting used to the idea of raising a family here ---- I like the idea of putting roots into the soil of west Texas... of planting myself here and growing.  I wouldn't mind coming back to the LLL one day to introduce my family to where my roots were first planted.

** LLL - Lubbock Lake Landmark