Jun 08 2006
in the morning
I do love the mornings here, especially this early (<8am) before it gets hot. The sun seems particularly clear, the sky is this pale blue that speaks of distance. It's chilly, in a good way. It reminds me, ever so slightly, of desert mornings, which are so beautiful they make you want to cry. If I could have the desert, but only for sunrise and sunset, I might want to stay there...
At any rate, this isn't the desert; the light is filtering through my grapevines out front, and things are growing so quickly that my tomato plants, planted a couple of weeks ago, are already blossoming, and the squashes have quadrupled in size. Plants are magical; in another lifetime, I'm going to study botany, the sorting of seeds and staining of careful slices of tissue for slides betokening a study rooted in history and venerability. There's nothing reproachable about working with plants. Some of the people I respect most are farmers - my uncle, a good friend - and I worry that knowledge of agriculture is being lost, subsumed for the mass of general public into a vague urge to garden, a poor substitute for farming. Ah, but here I am at an ag school, taking you might claim a hand in educating the students, so I suppose I'm doing my bit... despite the fact that my departments ignore the ag students altogether, that is.
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Well, that was tangential. I'll likely never be a farmer, though I suppose anything is possible. My instincts are all wrong for it. I'm not, after all, spending this beautiful mornng in my garden, though it desperately needs some help; instead I'm spending it downloading free software. Does anyone hae experience with Scribus? It’s open-source page layout and design software. It turns out the major packages start at $200 & up (for student versions); and I need to lay out a document.
Mmmm, there’s nothing like a tarball in the morning….
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