Date: 7 October 2008
Time: 1030 hours
Weather: Partly cloudy, chilllllly
Location: At the Mill Stream where it meets Winter Street
Tuesday Morning at the Mill Stream
I always debate with myself about what I should do on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I do not have any classes on these days and do not have to be at work until either 2 or 2:30 in the afternoon. Do I sleep in and waste half of my day? Or do I actually do something with my life and get out of bed and complete some work? This morning I definitely decided that it would be best to get out of bed. By the time that I got around, I was at my destination by about 10:30. Not too bad. I like this spot because it sort of is contradictory in a physical sense. The stream meets Winter Street in a perpendicular fashion and the two just do not mix well. Anyway, leaning over the green rail, I begin my observation of the area around me while cars pass behind my back. Leaves cover the ground completely. The only things coming out of it are a type of plant with a waxy leaf shaped almost like a bird’s feather. The branches twist up and out of the earth to be about 3 feet tall. The other plant that grows up out of the earth and the leaves is the tree that the leaves fell from. It does not seem to be too old, compared to some of the other trees on campus. Its bark is a gray color and has some moss growing on it randomly in spots. The branches stretch in all directions, over me and over the Mill Stream.
Date: 9 October 2008
Time: 1300 Hours
Weather: cool breeze and the sun is shining through a partly cloudy sky
Location: Below my room on Kaneko grounds
A Closer Follow-up
This is round two of observing the Kaneko ground around me. Last week, I made an observation from my balcony of the ground below it. Today, I have gone downstairs to observe these plants up close. Before I even got to the plants that I observed last week though, I stepped out of the door and was automatically distracted. As I was walking towards the plants, just before them, I saw a spider web and started to write about it. Strung between the branches of a tree and the tops of a bush of flowers, I wondered why the spider chose this spot as its home. It seems that it is not the most secure of places and I would expect it to be more in the corner of the building or something. Then again, I suppose that more food would fly through this way than into the corner of Kaneko. There was no spider in the web and it made me wonder again about where they go when they are not in their homes. It is not really something that I seriously want to consider. Anyway, my eyes went from the top of the web to where it was connected in the tree, up the branch, and onto something quite curious. Was it a berry? I could not say how many times I had walked past these trees and never noticed any sort of berry on them. They were almost the size of a ping-pong ball—slightly smaller. They were a strawberry red and hung from about a 3 inch stem. The peculiar thing about them is that there are tiny thorn-like objects sticking out randomly around the object. I was afraid to touch it, but figured the thorns were not too large. As I did touch it, I was not harmed (not too badly ☺) and I squeezed it together to see if it was hard. It was not and felt as though there was some sort of meaty-inside to it. How cool!
Date: 10 October 2008
Time: 0930 Hours
Weather: Overcast, cool
Location: Very west end of the Mill Stream on Grad School campus
The End of the Mill Stream
Jane and I have traveled to the very end of the Mill Stream where it meets a less than desirable end. After traveling down a cement canal, it plunges down about a 4 foot waterfall and back into a more natural setting. The bank on the south slopes steeply down and is covered with a layer of ivy. On the north side, the side that I am sitting on, the bank slopes more gently down and is instead covered in grass. There are also tons of acorns all around me from the trees that span overhead. Jane is sitting at the edge of the road where it goes over the stream. Below her is a grate that is there to stop anything that does not belong in Pringle Creek from entering. There is a white, plastic bag that is stuck in it. Looking up the stream, back to the east, I look back at the waterfall. It really is very pretty, even if it is man-made. In the corner closest to the south side of the bank though, I notice a green, plastic pop bottle. It sort of bobs around in the quiet corner and then forward into the rapids where it is pushed back into the corner again. I wonder what it would take for the bottle to be removed. Could it eventually make its way out, or would it take human intervention to stop it from its dead-end journey?
Date: 11 October 2008
Time: 1149 Hours
Weather: Sunny but crisp outside
Location: Objects found at the end of the Kaneko bridge, but am now sitting on the west side of the Kaneko apartments
It’s Time for your Close-up!
For my observation today, I grabbed two different pinecones. They were different in both size and development. It is a gorgeous day outside with not a cloud in site and a cool crisp in the air (perfect football weather!). I wanted to observe, instead of an entire place, just one object and note some details about this object. My first pinecone is the larger one. It is fanned open in that classic depiction of a pinecone and everything about it is completely symmetrical. The tops of each separate part are a light brown color, but there is a hint of the green that the pinecone used to be. Just below where the light brown ends, there is a band of a more reddish-brown color. It is very thin and where it ends, the rest of the part is a dark brown, almost a black. Looking at the cone, I find trapped inside a pine needle and a white fuzzy thing. For the most part, when holding the cone, I find that it is smooth to the touch.
My next pinecone is smaller in size and is not developed enough to have spanned out like the other one. Because it is not open, I cannot see the different colors inside of it and it appears to be the one, light brown color. The cone is not as easy to hold and I would not squeeze it as it is pointy to touch. Despite the fact that this pinecone is smaller, it still seems to be slightly heavier than the open cone.
Date: 11 October 2008
Time: 1640 Hours
Weather: Sunny, actually maybe warm? Slightly ☺
Location: Walking along Bellevue Street
Quick Observations
I was walking back from the football game and was taking in some of the trees that lined Bellevue Street. They were young, especially compared to other trees on campus. My biggest question was why the moss grew on them so randomly. What makes a place a good place for moss to grow?
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