I need to dig up the name of this rose - I know that I wrote it down somewhere, but of course, I can't remember where. I think it's the 1881 Madame Isaac Pereire, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it's a beauty, and the one in the garden is just covered in blossoms right now. It's wonderfully fragrant.
So when I got home from the lab today, what do I do? I go out into the garden (of course) with my camera and the Ancient Wonder Beagle - and notice that this very warm early April day has pushed my romaine lettuce up a few inches, and the spinach is now really spinach (so full and edible) and my potato plants are huge - only to hear a few minutes ago, on the local news, that we have a decent chance of frost in a few nights (Thursday and Friday nights, to be exact), an unusually late frost for the South Carolina lowcountry. A cold front is coming our way (okay, cold is relative here) - I'm sure I'll be outside when the cold arrives, covering my potatoes and other sensitive plants with blankets.
So I wander the garden this evening, instead of making myself sit down and work on my seminar that I have to give tomorrow afternoon - four hours up the road from here, at a large university to our west (it is west, isn't it? Perhaps a bit north too?). I remember when I used to be nervous about giving presentations a few weeks in advance, years ago - and now I've become one of those professors that grabs 'slides' from their students the afternoon before a talk, quickly reassembling then into a story, perhaps adding a few new slides - and being done with it. The talk will be on our coral research, which is blessed first with gorgeous images, and second with interesting data - and the first question I receive after such a presentation generally is 'Do you need help sampling?' to which I generally replay 'Get in line' - because the list is long. It's also a project that is definitely a 'work-in-progress' so the incompleteness of the data is just the nature of the beast - and leaves room for speculation and questions and evolving hypotheses. The data that we have generated thus far is insightful, a 'first' glance at the ecology of microorganisms associated with corals - and involves approaches that are solid and revealing - genomics, metagenomics, proteomics, metabolomics - all of the 'omics' more-or-less - so we are definitely learning this new world as we go along, taking baby steps, the ocassional giant steps - and of course, sometimes being sent back to the starting point. Again, the nature of the beast.
So I'll give my talk tomorrow, and although I won't share my images of my gardens, at some point while I am talking, I will wonder to myself 'why the hell not?' - so, maybe, just maybe - next time I will include an image of a rose (or two). Ahhhhh.....academic freedom!
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