blog post number TWO!

nice and long, to make up for the lack of posts during the past week. as far as content goes, maybe not enough to make up for the past week...oh well.

alrighty...here goes the second post on my blogboard. might not be that good...i don't know what i'm going to write about, so i'll probably just keep jabbering until i figure something out (and who knows how long that is going to take?). let's see.....well, what kinds of things do i think about while at work? it's fun to think about what it must have been like to live at filoli- to be allowed to run around on the lawns (definitely a no-no nowadays) or call the mansion "home". i wonder about what it must be like to have an actual job here, what it would be like to have some stability and not have to keep planning my life in three-month chunks. i think about how cool it would be to know pretty much all of the plants in the gardens on sight, both the latin and common names. that? oh, why, that's acer palmatum 'crimson queen', weeping cutleaf japanese maple 'crimson queen'. one of my personal favorites, right after prunus x subhirtella 'pendula rosea', the pink weeping cherry and... you know? but i think about having a job in horticulture, and think about how not qualified i am (well, feel) and...maybe if i actually started applying for jobs, then i'd find out about how qualified other people think i am, which would be better than just feeling like i'm not good enough. because maybe i am, but am just too unwilling to hope for that.

anyway, in my dream job, i am supporting myself through my art. but this probably wouldn't really work out because i draw better under stress (stress unrelated, usually, to the art that i am trying to produce, because, usually, when the stress is artwork related, then i only make satisfying progress on artwork that is not the artwork on which i need to be making satisfactory progress. yeeees). so maybe i don't have a dream job all perfectly imagined in my head.

it appears that i am in a complainy me-mood.

i'll go back to that stability thing. in some ways, getting a job and a house and being fairly firmly secured in one place is really attractive. i currently have property in four locations on both coasts. that is incredibly annoying because no matter where i end up, it will cost a lot of money to get the rest of myself there. i also feel divided, and that all of those places are viable options for future living arrangements, and i need to narrow down my options so that i can focus and start doing really in-depth searches in only one area- i don't want more options demanding my attention and annoying me with the possibility of better opportunities in other places.

on the other hand, the older i get, the closer i get to stability (it's pretty much inevitable). aaaaand....that kind of scares me. job stability doesn't scare me. having my own house and being settled for a while, away from home, doesn't scare me (in some ways that, too, would be a relief- look ma and pa! i did it- i'm a real adult! i can start paying off my loans now!). but suburbia scares me. collecting knick-knacks scares me. having kids definitely scares me....of course, having kids is pretty much dependent on several very serious factors, but...i don't know, it's just crazy to me how life keeps happening and that (lord willing) i'll someday be thirty......forty......fifty-five.......eighty......dead. not that any of those things are really that frightening, but the fact that that will happen to everyone, no matter what just kind of fascinates me and leaves me speechless and thought-less. ageing and mortality are definitely two things i have thought and mused a lot about pretty much since i hit my teens. i'm not sure exactly why, and i'm not really sure why i'm talking about it right now, especially since i'm not really saying anything.

so, to change the subject, here's what i did at work on friday.
1- checked temperatures (outdoor high and low, current, the highs and lows in four greenhouses, with several sections within those greenhouses to check as well) and the rain gauge (no moisture accumulation). then i misted the cuttings in the propagations house and watered the plants in the north greenhouse, mainly just the ferns.
2- because lisa was sick, i checked the houseplants down in the mansion and cleaned up after a few that had dropped petals or leaves on the antique wood floors. one of my favorite plants down in the house is the pinguicula, which i've never seen before and find pretty adorable.
3- my next task for the day was to start repotting some of the ivies in the nursery area. they haven't been repotted for about four years, so it was time to scrape off old roots and give them new soil. filoli has an extensive collection of ivies (one of my favorites is the cockle shell) that have been donated over the years by individuals and institutions, which are now planted along the south-west fences and in a small section of the garden near the high place. some are also in pots under the care of the greenhouse staff. so i removed the ivy from its plastic pot, scraped off about an inch of soil all the way around, and then repotted it in the same pot with new soil. filoli makes its own soil on-site from compost, perlite, coconut husks and....something else? i forget now. but it's lovely stuff. i worked on those until 2, when we have our afternoon break. after break the other intern and i had our plant quiz (featuring plants from the walled and woodland gardens*) and tour of the plants we'll have to know for next week's quiz, where the theme is weeds**.
4- that stuff went really quick, and we had about forty-five minutes left. i got to clean more seeds. forget-me-not seeds. i've been working my way through a paper bag-full. it's not really that fun. they're tiny. and it's hard to get rid of all the other debris. whiiiine.

and then the day was over and i went and picked some apples and a couple pears (free! organic!) and went home. yay.

*here are the plants we had to be able to identify:
polygonum aubertii, silver lace vine
rhododendron 'fragrantissimum', fragrant rhododendron
exochorda x macrantha 'the bride', pearl bush 'the bride'
metasequoia glyptostroboides, dawn redwood
magnolia 'elizabeth', magnolia 'elizabeth'
hydrangea quercifolium 'flemygea', 'snow queen' oakleaf hydrangea
camellia saluenensis, camellia
camellia japonica 'usu otome' ('pink perfection'), camellia 'pink perfection'
magnolia denudata (heptapeta), yulan magnolia
corylopsis paucifolia, buttercup winterhazel
citrus unshiu 'owari', satsuma mandarin orange 'owari'
nothofagus solandri, black beech
francoa ramosa, maiden's wreath
cyclamen hederifolium, dwarf cyclamen
clematis armandii, armand's clematis
prunus serrulata 'shirofugen', japanese cherry 'shirofugen'
prunus x subhirtella 'pendula rosea', pink weeping cherry
cornus florida f. rubra, pink flowering dogwood
rosa banksiae, lady banks' rose
and that is all of them. listed from memory :)

**i am getting tired. maybe i will list the weeds later. writing was better than watching dumb ol' tv. hopefully this isn't too whiny.