Flowers, flowers everywhere!

As part of my wonderful major, I'm taking a class called Herbaceous Plants. My friend April so kindly told me that this sounds like a class from Hogwarts, not BYU. Though it may seem friendly and unassuming, this class has been very difficult and demanding on my time, largely due to the fact that I have to memorize 25 plants a week, by sight, common name, scientific genus-species name (and cultivar, if applicable) and family. And then there's a quiz on it. I didn't do so hot on the first quiz, because I wasn't expecting it to be quite so rigourous. 38/50 - one of the higher scores in the class. This week though, I've been most dedicated in my learning of these plants (summer perennials this time). I visited the gardens at BYU where the plants are labelled, and searched for the plants on my list.

Then I took pictures, made flash cards, took another tour of the gardens, etc. (i'm very proud of my flashcards, and we use them at work to study, since three of us are in that class).

So not only can I tell you that yarrow and shasta daisies are in the same family, I can also now tell you what the floret pattern of the Scrophulariaceae family is, and that catmint and sage are more closely related to lavender (all in family Lamiaceae) than sea lavender is (family Plumbaginaceae).

Also, I just have to add that I love my new camera and its macrozoom settings which allow me to take awesome pictures of flowers. yay!

Dianthus - Dianthus (these are the best kind, when common and scientific names are the same!), family Caryophyllaceae

Echinacea purpurea - Coneflower, family AsteraceaeGaillardia aristata - Blanket flower, family Asteraceae

Beauty is Pain, darling!

On Tuesday (Sept 15) I bought new ballroom dance shoes! Specifically, Latin ballroom dance shoes. I love them - they're so beautiful! I can tell they will definitely help improve my dancing, but first I have to break them in.

They are a solid three sizes smaller than my previous shoes,

which I purchased on too little information off the internet. My old ones have been adequate for my purposes until now, but since I'm taking a Latin ballroom dance class now, I need shoes that fit correctly. A correct fit for a ballroom shoe is very, very snug. The shoe should be one with your foot! You can see in this picture that my new shoe fits this qualification, while the old one fails miserably. So now I just get to suffer throught tightness and stiffness and blisters until these shoes are broken in. Fun times!

Is it Fall yet???

This year I'm unreasonably excited for the fall season. The other day I was walking through campus when I looked up to the mountains - Red! The leaves are starting to change colors up in the mountains! I especially miss Cache Valley this time of year for the changing colors, Sardine Canyon in particular, but Provo is not too shabby.

For the past month, Melinda and I have been looking wistfully at our long sleeve shirts and our cozy sweaters, wondering when we would be able to justify wearing them. Today walking to church it was cloudy and a bit chilly, and Melinda said, "Hey Jessica, if it's like this after church, we can wear sweaters today!" So guess what we did as soon as we got home from church? That's right. Sweater time. We were so excited by the event that we had to take pictures even. Granted that it's still above 70 degrees outside (which weatherbug reading I'm quite skeptical about, but then, I haven't been outside), but nonetheless!

Some of the reasons I'm so excited for fall:

• Sweaters, hoodies, scarfs, and jackets
• Trees changing colors
• Drinking hot chocolate
• Eating soup, and other hot dishes
• Having a real quilt on my bed
• Not sweating so much at work
• The smell of fall
• The fact that I don't have to rake up leaves
• Football games
• Weather (just, in general, not just hot and nothing else)
• other reasons i'm unable to articulate