The Dentists
I actually don't have a garden. I had a basil plant once, and it lasted almost a year in my cramped, lightless college apartment before it died. Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb.
I learned the most fascinating tidbit in my Portuguese class yesterday. My class is called "Survey of Luso-Brazilian Linguistics," and so far we have been exploring the nitty-gritty details of phonetics, phonology, and--most recently--morphology. Our latest venture has been to create these lovely tree charts that plot out the structure of different words, starting with the root of the word.
Long story short, we ended up discussing the roots of different berry words. Allow me to explain.
blueberry=a berry that is blue
blackberry=a berry that is black
But what about strawberry? Raspberry? Boysenberry?
We learned that historically (and continuing into the modern day), farmers would cover their fields in straw so the birds could not see or get to the ripe fruit huddled beneath. And so, the word:
strawberry=a berry picked through straw
We also learned that a rasp is a tool used in woodworking to scrape off layers of wood. Some plants have protective thorns that, when breached, scrape off layers of the picker's skin. And so, the word:
raspberry=a berry with rasp-like thorns
Lastly, we learned that a man named Rudolph Boysen created a hybrid between blackberries and raspberries in the 1920's. The result:
boysenberry=a berry created by a man named Boysen
Cool stuff, yeah?
Simon and Garfunkel
It's been a long week. Even though we had a three-day weekend. How does that work?
I had a test in one of my upper-level statistics classes today, and after I finished it I had this overwhelming feeling of paralysis. Given, I was in shock about how poorly I think I did. But it was more than that--it was a feeling of being in a winter wanderland. And no, I did not just misspell "wonderland."
winter wanderland \'win-ter 'wän-der-land\ noun
: a place of hazy daydreams of summer, frost-bitten hands, and muddled minds resulting from the February drag of winter
Basically, I am ready for winter to be over. It has been raining quite a bit in Provo lately, and I have taken advantage of the melting snow by embarking on afternoon drives up the canyon. I go about four times a week, first making a stop at a local eatery for driving sustenance, and then taking the winding road up, up, up into the throat of the Rockies. If you plan on a similar adventure, I would recommend listening to your favorite book on tape. Mine has been Jim Dale's reading of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Give it a listen; Dale's performance is a fantastical masterpiece. And no, I did not just misspell "fantastic."
Some things I actually appreciate about winter:
1. The mountains in the morning when the clouds are thin and the air is cool and every crack and cliff is crisp and clear.
2. The quiet of the library when everything is silent, but the silence is full of deep breaths and deep thoughts and deep snores.
3. The sweet, biting taste of cilantro that seems to intensify exponentially the further along in winter it gets.
4. The last remains of fall--crisped brown and gold leaves that scatter the ground and peek out through the snow like confetti from a party the night before.
