West-ward Ho!

Howdy,  

Well here we are, my internship is almost over! To tell you the truth, the past few weeks have been super stressful as far as intern work goes but it is no ones fault. Just purely the great dance of life always keeping me on my toes! :) This past month has truly reinforced the fact that life moves really fast sometimes and if you blink you might miss something important. I missed about 3 weeks of internship work this month, due to getting sick and traveling which really set me back. I have been trying to play catch up this week and thankfully I have gotten a lot done! However, I'm wanted to talk about the trip I took that caused me to miss a few days of work because it really impacted me and has added a great deal to my internship!

Hallie goes West!

I recently went to visit my sister in California, it was my first time in a plane or that far west ever! 

Northern California blew my mind, it is absolutely beautiful. I mean for Pete sakes there were Hydrangea growing in the MIDDLE OF SUMMER, that is completely unheard of in Texas...like ever. The weather there is perfect to grow almost anything it seems. It was interesting to see how much the weather can affect the growth of something and how abundantly things strive in an environment like California!

My sister had a full blown garden with tomatoes growing in wine barrels that she started from seed. She also had lettuce growing on her porch and a peach and walnut tree in her back yard. I have never in my life picked a piece of fruit from a tree, washed it off and eaten it! It was awesome! I took lots of pictures of both to use in my lesson on Fruits and Nuts in Chapter 6 of the JMG Manual! 
There were Agapanthus (African Lily as most people know it) in every corner you turned, in the medians of all the roads; it was amazing! My sister have patches and patches growing around her house! I had way more Horticulture nerd moments then I really want to admit! In fact I probably took more pictures of the amazing gardens areas in California than anything else! 

They have hanging pots full of flowers hanging from the light poles in San Francisco. By the bay there was a crab which had succulents growing out of its body! Do you see why I was so excited?! What I thought was truly interesting was the condition of all of the plants, because they were all in wonderful condition. I grew curious about what kind of maintenance has to be done, if any, to those gardens. I think it would be interesting to work for a city and be able to design new gardens and areas like this! It was truly interesting to experience a different type of Horticulture and different type of landscape design which will help me a lot in my up coming chapter on Landscape Horticulture!

Super Cool California Things: 

Sequoia sempervirens

Another really amazing thing that you don't see in Texas are Redwood Trees. In Northern California the species Sequoia sempervirens grows! Some have been there for almost 2,000 years. They are breath taking and obviously huge. The bark alone is almost a foot thick! I learned that people used to log these by hand saw!!! WHAT?! How crazy is that! I even got to look at one of the saws they used, it was the biggest one I have ever seen! 

I am planning on using the pictures and information I will research about Redwoods in a program I am creating about the installation of trees into gardens and home landscape for Chapter 5 of the JMG Manual. I will also be incorporating the Survivor Tree from the memorial site of 9/11! 



Air Plants: 

Possibly the coolest souvenir I could get were Air Plants. Air Plants are a type of Bromeliad plant that do not need soil to grow. All you have to do is soak them in water for 30 minutes once or twice a week. 

My sister had given me one for Christmas and I forgot to water it. The only plant I killed all semester would be the one I can't go to the local nursery to get! Well needless to say...I kind of ended up buying 4 (totally worth it),  they are so cool and there were tones of  different species that I cannot recall the names of! One of them was even blooming purple flowers. It is truly amazing what plants are capable of doing!

Plants would be great for children in low income housing that don't have a plot of ground to grow anything. In California they just place them in a small mouth vase or a piece of drift wood. 

Although this trip was not directly connected with my internship, I think it was very important that I had an experience like this during this time. Being that JMG is a national program, it is important to understand the different environments that the students are in and how I can relate these lesson plans to all states! I am thankful to be able to travel and create new connections with my internship!  Now that I am back into the swing of things I have created 3 more programs this week. I even got to find my inner child and do some tracing and coloring for a tessellation activity on the use of repetition! I also used a picture of some grape vines I took in the Russian River Valley in California to represent repetition! 

Ready for some more awesome stuff (as if this internship wasn't already awesome)! Today I met with my supervisors and went over the programs I created and I got some exciting news! My instructor let me now that he is very interested in keeping me on for some contractual work because of how comfortable I have become with the Word Press site. I believe I briefly mentioned something about this in a previous post but this seems to be the real deal now! I would be working a few hours a week with miscellaneous projects for the JMG office as they continue to transfer their old website to the new one! The potential of this offer really happening is very good and I am beyond ecstatic! I am crossing my fingers that I can continue my work with JMG past my internship and see where all these programs I have created go! 

Anywho, Thank you for reading. I only have a few more posts before my internship is done! Peas stick around for them!

Have a grape day! Also, someone please take be back to Cali!?

Thanks & Dig'Em, 

Hallie