I keep forgetting to write this blog. I suppose I should remedy this before it snowballs into a really big problem.

My first day of Senior Projects was yesterday, the 10th of May. Since I didn't go in today and failed the Chemistry AP exam instead, I'll write about Monday.

Oh yeah, for my senior project, I'm working in the Conservation department at the Berry Botanic Garden.

It's about 30 minutes from my house to the garden on a good day, but yesterday, it took us about 45 minutes since traffic was abysmal for no apparent reason. So I got in at about 9:00.

The Berry Botanic Garden is less like a "conventional" botanic garden and more like a giant, fancy house surrounded by a huge garden. It's also really pretty. Maybe I'll post a picture of it later. It's also small; there's maybe... four? people in Conservation, which is where I'm working, and a few more in Horticulture.

Anyway, I went upstairs and met with my two on-site mentors, Ed Guerrant and Erin Riggs, who assigned me my first task of the day: inputting the accession numbers of dead plants from germination trials into an Excel spreadsheet. It sounds mindnumbing, but it was actually pretty fun. Erin also has bars of chocolate in her desk, which she shared with us. I loved the mint chocolate, but I think I'll avoid the chili one for now.

Erin and I stopped by to talk to Margaret, who I think is the director. Apparently, she is a Scripps alumni (alumnus?) I will ask her about her experience later.

After I finished my first job, Erin and Courtney, who is in Horticulture, took me to an area right outside the greenhouse with all these little pots of plants which were part of some ongoing germination trial, and assigned me to take a census of all the living plants. There were a lot of plants. Like, 200+. So, yeah, that's my job for the rest of the week. So I took my clipboard and numerous pieces of paper, and started counting plants. The whole plant organization thing is complicated and deals with accession numbers, and I'll probably explain that later. This job... wasn't as fun, simply because there were a bunch of little spiders which seemed to love making their homes around the plant identification tags, which made identifying plants a whole lot harder, since spiders are so creepy and I had to crane my neck to avoid touching them. Spiders aside, though, it wasn't that bad,

I left at about 3:00, since I had to go to Frisbee. And ugh, Frisbee is going to be such a problem. I was so tired, I literally almost stood there while the game was going on around me. And I can't miss any more days.

That's all for now. I'll write more tomorrow. If I don't forget again, that is.