By some miracle, after four days of slick rain and dense skies that felt like a Sherlock Holmes dark and stormy night, it is lovely outside. It is so lovely that I have retreated to my new favorite study destination of the year, the trellis just outside the Wellesley College Greenhouses, blanketed by thin vines bearing large heart-shaped leaves. Junior year has brought me a new appreciation of the greenhouses. There’s nothing like having your study break being stroking the leaves of a banana plant, or admiring a particularly beautiful cape myrtle flower. It’s the stuff ten-minute breaks were made for.
And there is a lot of studying going on in my life right now. Never before have I had a week with such massive amounts of reading: a 700 page book on women’s anatomy which I am writing a review on for my 300 level seminar, with another 100 pages of Cognitive poetics readings tacked on. This normally would not be much cause for concern, except for the fact that Genetics and Econ Stats, the two courses in my life not assigning massive amounts of reading have midterms on the same day: Friday. Most of my weekend was spent trying to wrestle the mass of work down into something containable.
I did, however, end up at a haunted house last Friday night. The last haunted house I went to was definitely aimed towards children, which led me to underestimate this one, which was definitely not. It wasn’t a house so much as a haunted corn maze, with creepy bunnies jumping out at me and shacks I learned quickly to dread entering. There was one room that the walls, ceiling, and floor were all covered in this optical illusion wallpaper, and there was a strobe light flashing while a man dressed entirely in the same optical illusion fabric danced back and forth. It was so trippy, literally, I could barely walk through it. But luckily, I had a Wellesley friend with me, and we could stick towards the middle of the pack where the monsters couldn’t get us (mostly). So yes, I did have to listen to an entire Tchaikovsky symphony to calm down my nervous system afterwards, but it was still a lot of fun.
The Queen of the Night (aahha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaah)
Bringing this post full circle, when we got back to Wellesley that night, we went straight to the greenhouses. The rare queen of the night cactus was blooming for one-night only, and being the bio-nerds and plant aficionados we are, we couldn’t help but go and see it. It was such a contrast to the adrenaline of the haunted house: being in the peaceful greenhouse after dark, breathing in the perfume of wonderful, sweet, hanging flowers, while the rain beat against the window panes.
Ever lovely yours,
Eleanor
The lake from my walk tonight <3