Once again...

...i need more sleep.

I'm not sure what it is, this aversion to sleep, but i am convinced it will soon wreak havoc on my graduate career unless i get it under control. It makes me forgetful. It makes it nigh impossible to wake up on time to get to school with breakfast in my tummy. Make that: get to school on time with breakfast in my tummy. Or get to school on time at all. And it makes me forgetful.

We had a field trip today to the Huntington Library and Gardens and I FORGOT MY CAMERA! My precious, which i hardly know how to use because it can do everything except make dinner. It would have been helpful to have today because the gardens were in glorious spring bloom.

The (third ever in 100 years!) director gave us a death-march paced tour of the Desert Garden, Japanese Garden, and Chinese Garden because our design studio project this quarter is to brainstorm ideas for one of those. He told us some of his ideas and visions, gave us history of the estate and the individual gardens, and was a delightfully informative host. I look forward to many more (free! yay! whew!) visits to research use, topography, and come up with ideas. (And to take photos.)

The estate is intended to still feel as though it was someone's private estate. When Huntington bought it, the land was a working ranch with oranges and peaches, and the site of one of the first commercial avocado groves in California. Little of that remains, but the gardens are at a personal scale in many ways (personal if you were a multi-millionaire), and have the funky charms and idiosyncrasies of a 100-year-old private garden. Many of the cacti and succulents in the Desert Garden were collected by the Huntingtons and the first garden superintendent; the Japanese garden has elements requested by Mrs. Huntington, and the Chinese Garden is brand spanking new but only the first phase is complete--there are about 10 more acres to develop. The Japanese Garden needs renovation, not in least because a lovely old tree died this past year and everything under it needs shade which it won't have for many years, and a new bonsai court is in progress for sun-loving bonsai, and a tea garden is planned. And for the desert, which i love, most of the paths are closed to the public because of steep terrain, unstable footing, and very prickly plants with little regard for path delineation.

I haven't decided which of the three to focus on this quarter, but at the moment i'm leaning toward the desert. It isn't truly a desert garden the way the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is, but it's a world-class collection of plants begun in the early 1900's. And, learning a lot about solitude this past year, i've become more attracted to the desert as a place of weakness as well as a place of strength. There should be places of drama where plants explode in color and texture, as well as places of subtle discovery to reward those who sit and study. The desert kills or it woos--it depends on if one insists on rushing through headlong or realizes the wisdom of yielding to forces much greater than oneself.