OK, so Buena has a big garden, and I don’t. So I don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about. But, what can I say, I’m a scientist! So I believe in my ideas. Here’s one.
Buena is growing corn and lettuce in raised beds to keep the snails away. Most of those raised beds are made of wood–but recently Buena ran out of space and decided to plant lettuce in a box made of corrugated cardboard, surrounded by plastic tape. Yes, folks, it does indeed look pretty awful. Well, as it happens some of the lettuce seeds fell into the holes at the edge of the corrugation…and they sprouted.
My idea is to used this as a simple way to start seeds. One could pack the cardboard with, for example, tree seeds, then plant the edge of the cardboard in the ground.
No, wait…for tree seeds, perhaps it would be interesting to watch the roots grow. What if one could find plastic-backed corrugated cardboard, for starting the seeds while watching the roots expand within the cardboard. Alternatively, maybe a long piece of cardboard could serve as a sort of wick, to allow the tree access to water at levels far below its own root system?
For garden seeds, this might represent an easy way to plant mixes in ordered groups. We could sell a stretch of cardboard containing various kinds of seeds in attractive groups. The cardboard could just be planted directly to create a nice planter box.
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This one is cool, and simple. Are the horizontal lines in this image parallel?
Isn’t it amazing? I actually think it is easy to tell that the lines are in fact parallel, especially on a computer screen, where the pixels seem to line up. But without thinking just glancing at the image, the lines seem to curve dramatically!
This reminds me of the way that love changes our perception of physical beauty. Looked at in detail, many folks aren’t beautiful. But when those same folks are loved by another person, they become intensely, dramatically beautiful.
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That’s right, I said “Jerry”. My husband’s name is Phillip. More on that score later.
Jerry was my lab-mate in high school biology class. The setting was Father Brendan’s Catholic High School, a squat, brick, sizzling building in the Florida sun. There was a big parking lot out front, surrounded by chain link, where the lucky seniors could park their cars. In those days, it was OK for the seniors to drive to Taco Bell for lunch.
But Jerry and I were sophomores. Jerry was only 14 (smart kid!) and our teacher was a musclebound steroid freak and track coach who would later be arrested for stalking. A pretty nice guy, though…maybe he’d just started with the steroids. Jerry was a skinny kid, small, redheaded, freckled, unapologetic, outgoing, confident, and smart as a whip. Kind of a surprising list of adjectives, which clashes with itself. I was a dippy, dissipated, tan, and totally hot (if I do say so myself) girl without the least interest in biology, unless you count a more-than-healthy interest in the opposite sex.
Jerry and I were put together forcibly by our musclebound leader and–I liked Jerry immediately. He was fun, didn’t mind cutting a cat open just to see what was in there. If he was in love with me, he didn’t show it, and he didn’t expect me to do a thing. Which began to annoy me after a while. OK, I was dippy, but not dumb, and who can blame me for not liking the smell of formalin. So I became the chronicler of Jerry’s dissections. He was absolved of all writing, and I was absolved of all dissection.
Near the end of that sophomore year things got hairy at home when my sister eloped, at age 17, with her 21-year-old boyfriend, who worked at Taco Bell. That’s right, amigos, my sister had it all planned out. Things at the house were stressful, to say the least, and I started to skip school a lot. Things at Jerry’s house were idyllic by comparison, because Jerry had parents who actually worked, every day, thus leaving the house empty. So Jerry and I spent a few days laying around his house, playing hooky. No big deal, in retrospect, such a short amount of time. But we became close then, and I at least knew that we’d stay close forevermore.
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Buena is pretty, not in the way of a leggy model, but more in the line of a robust California girl, bursting merrily at the seams with good health and cheer. She comes to my shoulders but could probably lift me easily. She is a constant stream of meandering, anlaytic talk, which is directed equally at herself and others.
Her hair is brown, with honest-to-goodness milk and honey highlights earned in the garden, or talking over the back fence with me. Wavy, and cut to the shoulders, I doubt whether it has seen the shears of a true stylist. More likely some immigrant California farm laborer-turned-barber, whom she secretly desires. Her ears are very small and properly upright, and Jerry probably loves them with all his heart. Buena has large, brown Ashkenzi eyes with long lashes. Her face is golden brown and incongruously freckled across the nose and cheeks, as though some errant ancestor had married a goy, perhaps even an Irishman.
Buena has a short, powerful frame carrying large breasts, which are frequently unconstrained. I have passed entire evenings watching my husband make tender conversation, to judge by his eye contact, with those breasts. Her body is a kinetic, lively thing, which seems to carry the potential energy of great height at all times. In the garden, Buena keeps a soccer ball, which she kicks from place to place for occupation between digs.
Buena favors shorts at all times and sleeveless tops, with or without a fleece pullover. She always looks as though she has just returned from a hike, or a camping trip. Her legs are stocky, even meaty–the legs of a soccer player. Her arms are incongruously thin, stringy, and tan, having been exercised only in the garden, and not on the soccer field. Buena’s hands are small and rough, with short inelegant nails.
That’s Buena, from the outside, from my POV. Buena’s insides are another fascinating topic, which I’ll save for another day.
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I guess I’d better start by explaining my tag line and domain name.
First, the blog is just for me and you, and I was encouraged to establish it by my loving friends, Jerry and Buena. So here’s hoping you like it.
Second, what does agouti mean? It’s my nickname, yes, but why? Google says this:
is an agouti. Looks like a guinea pig with long legs, and apparently lives in South America. But that isn’t what I meant. And I don’t look like that! I will post a picture later to prove it. It turns out that agouti also refers to a gene in the mouse that produces bands of color in each fur follicle, which makes them a beautiful golden-brown. Brownish-golden mice with normal copies of this gene are called agouti, like so:
Well…that’s what my hair looks like! NOT “mousy”, mind you, which means something different. Instead, “agouti”. The nickname was given to me by my junior-year-of-college boyfriend Ed, who I met while working in a mouse genetics laboratory. Ever since, they call me Agouti. Only my parents call me Bernadette.
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