This post has a bunch of pictures I took at school to m
ake my mama happy. More pending, quite probably. The tour shall begin with the nopal forest, as I shall call it, or a field of cactus for those lay-persons among the readership of this fine blog. Since the camera randomly decides to take stripy photos, some of these are going to totally suck, but ain´t that the way. Anyway, this is a cactus pad that really wants OUT!! The nopal forest is pretty cool, and I´ll have to take a shot of the whole thing, because it just got chopped recently so it looks like a new recruit in the military (space monkey!), 
only with lots of new little green things poking out. For those who are unaware, plants get tired of growing once they get old, so you have to scare the crap out of them by chopping them down and then they start pushing new growth. So that`s the logic there. Oh, and they sell the stuff they grow here. How cool is that? Including bunnies: I will take a picture of the big sign that says, LIVE BUNNIES FOR SALE, GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT.
The next photo is the backside of the belly of the academic beast (the unimpressive
library, also known as my home base) on a hazy morning.
Next are the shots I took while working in the orchard. This is my new fun-time in the great out-of-doors. Since I am again bikeless (boo!) I gotta get out somehow... and I get nice and dirty too. This shot features (tinily) my fruit production class. What have we been learning in the practicum hour? How to plant an orchard!! They ordered a
crapton of baby trees two years ago. They've waited quite a while for the spot to be ready... one girl took initiative (as it is her dream in life to have a vineyard) and planted all the grapes and made it her Thing last year. Last year's fruti class also took on the responsibility of planting the first 400 or so trees. And they, like us, were only four people... we pretty much finished the thing last week, so that' s pretty cool. I know what you're thinking: Cat, how is it exactly that you plant an orchard? So I'll tell you. You start by digging giant trenches on the north-south axis at 3 or four meters apart. Then you 
measure out key points on your grid, each at no more than 35 meters from each other (because any longer and you're not going to get reliable lines), and you stick in some stakes at intervals of 3 to four meters. Then you run strings on the east-west axis between the stakes to serve as a guide for tree placement--but it's just a guide, mind you. When you start planting, you have to line up the trees by sight to make sure they are just so, both with relation to the trees in their line as well as those diagonal to them, and then you place the sapling--just so--facing north, of course... and you bury that sucker, making sure that the graft is well above soil level, because otherwise the scion will root and you`ll lose the benefits of the rootstock. Then you pat yourself on the back and move 
on, except that the string ends and then he had us plant trees without the string as a guide. I felt very accomplished with my well placed treelings.
ake my mama happy. More pending, quite probably. The tour shall begin with the nopal forest, as I shall call it, or a field of cactus for those lay-persons among the readership of this fine blog. Since the camera randomly decides to take stripy photos, some of these are going to totally suck, but ain´t that the way. Anyway, this is a cactus pad that really wants OUT!! The nopal forest is pretty cool, and I´ll have to take a shot of the whole thing, because it just got chopped recently so it looks like a new recruit in the military (space monkey!), 
only with lots of new little green things poking out. For those who are unaware, plants get tired of growing once they get old, so you have to scare the crap out of them by chopping them down and then they start pushing new growth. So that`s the logic there. Oh, and they sell the stuff they grow here. How cool is that? Including bunnies: I will take a picture of the big sign that says, LIVE BUNNIES FOR SALE, GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE HOT.The next photo is the backside of the belly of the academic beast (the unimpressive
library, also known as my home base) on a hazy morning.Next are the shots I took while working in the orchard. This is my new fun-time in the great out-of-doors. Since I am again bikeless (boo!) I gotta get out somehow... and I get nice and dirty too. This shot features (tinily) my fruit production class. What have we been learning in the practicum hour? How to plant an orchard!! They ordered a
crapton of baby trees two years ago. They've waited quite a while for the spot to be ready... one girl took initiative (as it is her dream in life to have a vineyard) and planted all the grapes and made it her Thing last year. Last year's fruti class also took on the responsibility of planting the first 400 or so trees. And they, like us, were only four people... we pretty much finished the thing last week, so that' s pretty cool. I know what you're thinking: Cat, how is it exactly that you plant an orchard? So I'll tell you. You start by digging giant trenches on the north-south axis at 3 or four meters apart. Then you 
measure out key points on your grid, each at no more than 35 meters from each other (because any longer and you're not going to get reliable lines), and you stick in some stakes at intervals of 3 to four meters. Then you run strings on the east-west axis between the stakes to serve as a guide for tree placement--but it's just a guide, mind you. When you start planting, you have to line up the trees by sight to make sure they are just so, both with relation to the trees in their line as well as those diagonal to them, and then you place the sapling--just so--facing north, of course... and you bury that sucker, making sure that the graft is well above soil level, because otherwise the scion will root and you`ll lose the benefits of the rootstock. Then you pat yourself on the back and move 
on, except that the string ends and then he had us plant trees without the string as a guide. I felt very accomplished with my well placed treelings. On Friday afternoons I have my plant pathology lab, which is very pleasant. Last class we got to make cultivation media, which includes the use of such fun things as autoclaves, beakers, bunsen burners, autoclaves, 
anti-contamination chamber thingies that are kind of like fume hoods but with the power of ANTI-PATHOGENIC UV RAYS... plus, potatoes, agar, and dextrose.
anti-contamination chamber thingies that are kind of like fume hoods but with the power of ANTI-PATHOGENIC UV RAYS... plus, potatoes, agar, and dextrose.There are only three of us in the class (another girl added it last week), so it goes pretty fast. Here are some pictures of the lab, for your viewing pleasure. I also provide for your amusement and evaluation, photos of the Agrícola part of the FESC campus, which is about as architecturally defunct as UCD, but they also likely blew less money building it. In the second picture you will notice a cool mural featuring various prehispanic themes. Why they don't let you rotate your photos once you've bloggered them I don't know. 
1 comment:
Finally I can comment.
Thanks for the pictures. Great blog- lots of info. More please.
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