You Grow Girl | Plant Journal :: Gayla


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Vanda Orchid

My First Orchid

Monday August 14, 2000.

		Yesterday I purchased what can only be described as an excellent and super fun gadget. It is the intel Play QX3 Computer Microscope. It is basically a little camera that sits on a microscope base and plugs into the USB port on your computer. It magnifies objects from 10 to 200X which isn't much for a microscope, but enough to have a lot of fun with. Frankly I wish it did at least 500X but I'm not complaining since I got the thing for half price. You can take stills with it or make slideshows that can be set to awful music ranging from galactic, 2001 Space Odyssey ripoffs to banjo twang and ripping guitar solos. You can also make movies (which is good) or disort your images and apply cheesy filters (bad). Anyways this isn't a big promo for the toy so I'll stop here. My point is that I plan to use it to put up lots of nice images of plants on this site so that I can justify making such a frivilous purchase. I wasted a couple of hours yesterday afternoon taking pictures of various plant parts and giggling gleefully. This brings me back to my childhood. The very first thing I saved my money up for was a $10.00 plastic microscope from Consumers Distributing. I spent hours that first night looking at toothpaste and aquarium water under that thing. I followed all the rules they taught us at school such as how to handle the microscope with one hand underneath with the other hand holding the arm so that you don't drop it or jiggle the delicate apparatus when you move it from safe storage to your desk. Anyways I'm getting off topic here. Plants are the point of this journal. Not sentimental walks down the nerdy roads of my life. Like I was saying, here's some pictures.

Friday August 11, 2000.

		So many new things have happened since the last entry, most of it dealing with consumerism. I purchased a lovely bonsai in China Town a few weeks ago. See how the pot looks like a tree trunk and it has a tiny clay pagoda? I picked out the pot and the pagoda. It came in a plain container. I love it so much, I'd put it on my desk if I could. Unfortunately, my desk is a sunless place that is so crammed with technological devices there just isn't space for greenery. I make it sound like I work in a cave or something. It's not so dark that I've evolved into an eyeless creature that has no use for sight in a dark world. I am now the proud owner of an amazing hard cover book on the photography of Karl Blossfeldt. I would put a photo here but that would be illegal. Although his photos are relatively simple studio images of plants on white backgrounds, they have a surreal quality to them. He makes plants look like alien life forms. As an update to the mystery garden ornaments, they were there but one had been moved to a new location when I left for lunch today. However, when I returned from lunch one of them was gone. We'll see how long the other one lasts. Finally, I bought some other plants that are for an article so not really worth mentioning and I was almost on TV today but that has nothing to do with plants just my own vanity. previous entry