My Strawberry!

My strawberry!
Since I have taken The Agriscience in the school, I’ve learned the knowledge about the progress of Agriscience and how to plant a plant. I couldn’t wait to cultivate my own plant. Fortunately, my host mom brought me to Lowe’s, a warehouse for every need of a house. I was expecting to plant strawberry because I through USA is a country where strawberry and cherry (which is very expensive in Taiwan) are cheap and easy to grow. Finally, I found out boxes of strawberry runners and picked up two kinds of strawberry: Tristar and Surecrop.
Replanting the strawberry from the box to regular pots wasn’t a difficult work but you need to handle it carefully. I carefully move my strawberry from the box, separate them and replanted into the pots though I caught cold and felt dizzy that day. Because each box has about 10 strawberry plants crowded in a small area, they didn’t seem to be healthy when I planted it. Physically, they pretty weak then. I separated them into 3 boxes watered them and put in my host mom’s garden room. Supposedly, I could have my first harvest during May.
Everyday, I came back from school and walked into the garden room checking my baby strawberries. Since the first day I check them, they grew awfully fast. Couple days later, they seemed to adjust the new environment completely. A week later, some of them seem to be 3 or 4 inches tall. Now, I have to put them under sun in the most time of the day to prevent they to be too leggy. My host mom taught me how to water them as they need. Too much or too little are not good for them. She took my hand and put on one of her plant. I felt the top soil is really dry and definedly need some water so we water them. To water the strawberry, I need to use the same logic too.
My said she will teach me how to strawberry short cake when I harvest. Normally, strawberry is for eating freshly. Some of friends like to eat strawberry with yogurt and cream or eat with cake. I purely just want to top the strawberry on my daily cereal bowl.
Strawberry is a romantic plants. As my host mom said “ it has the most beautiful flower among the fruit plants.” It is also excited to me cultivate and take care of a plants with love and expect. Day by day, the strawberry grows taller and taller. When will I have Ruby-strawberry?

Puppies!

These days have been cold and windy. Actually, it made me a little homesick because of the weather. I remembered during the winter of Taiwan. We have monsoon from the northeast. The cold air carries water vapor from the sea can really make me feeling cold as it enters my body. While the cold weather was driving me crazy, our family had really good news. Our Joonburg, the blue heeler girl had Puppies!
The afternoon of February 6th, Joonburg had the first puppy that is a boy. Couple hours later, she had another one who is a boy too. Unfortunately, one of the puppies died before it was born but in the late evening, we got another boy. The next day, which was Chinese New Year, we had another one, but again, one of them just fell asleep and never woke up. Totally, we had two puppies. One with big spot on the eye called ”Shiner” and the other one called ”Breezier”. Viva!
We were all excited about the new lives coming. Since 2 and half months ago, weeks. At the start, they just stayed away from each other. When they touched each other, they would just bark and still had not right chemical. After the week, we moved them to the neighbor’s pen to see if they would mate in the different place. Neighbor Tart separate them in the different place and couple days later put them together to see if they would miss each other. Anyway, they didn’t seem like they like each other so we had no choice but gave up.
Two weeks later after she came back home, we found out her belly growing bigger and bigger day by day. We were so happy and looked forward to see what will the puppies look like. There came a question, we didn’t know whose puppies father. Actually, Joonburg had three chances to get pregnant. The first guy was the one who is living in the third paragraph in this article now. The second guy was our little boy Ret Butler, the Pomeranian. We freed him in order to chase the deer away from eating our plants and he was a really naughty boy. He likes to urinate on everything to reasonably declare his territory but he had a strange habit. He liked to smell and even licked on Joonburg buttocks. In fact, we saw him being able to make Joonburg lying down so we didn’t underestimate this boy at all. By the way, another guy was Neighbor’s golden retriever. Once a while, Joonburg unusually sneak out of the property and came back couple hours later. Maybe she was dating with her boyfriend.
Finally, everyone wanted to know whose is it badly. Can you imagine how the mixture of a blue heeler and a Pomeranian look like?
During Joonburg childbirth, our host mom had a touching experience. She saved one of those puppies that are alive. When she found out the second puppy was born, she quickly knew the puppy had problem to live, she was calm and tried to help the puppy. She uses her hand and blew air into puppy’s tiny mouth and pushed his teeny-weeny ribs. I am a student of lifeguard but I never knew how to do CPR for doggie. As I said, it was a state-in-arts ”high technology”. I was happy to see a saved life.
Life is always cherished and holy. I am glad I can sit here and tell you a story today because of my mom and my dad. Maybe somewhere in the future, I will have my own ”puppies (babies)”. I must be a good dad!

The Art Reception in Longwood Center of Visual Art

The Art Reception in Longwood Center of Visual Art
My host mom is a professional artist participates in many kinds of local art program and group. Fortunately, our local university, the Longwood University had established an art center for art exhibition or artist meeting. Every seasons, they have regular reception for the new coming art works. I am glad that I have the pleasure to participate this reception for mind and appetite (Actually I cannot wait!).
After swimming training, Vini and I walked to the Art center. On the way, the beauty of this charming little town came to my eyes. Farmville used to be a downtown for farmers shopping and gathering together. Since 1839, the Longwood College in Farmville has trained thousand of teachers for basic education and higher-level -occupational training personnel. Couple years ago, Longwood changed into the 4-year university with more resource and development. It has also brought the town lots of benefits on living quality and educational source. Obviously, the prize of the real estate has come up really quick. Lots of invest gives the town some public construction like the Art Center. It also makes the town classically elegant.
Although I was really hungry after swimming (the human mind is still operated by food), I was really excited and attracted by the art works. The topic of this season is the African Art From Permanent Collection. Though those little black native African masks were pretty cute but a little bit scary, I still loved the rural African wild atmosphere among that masterpiece.
But, actually the most thing catch my eyes was a assembled sculpture ” The Higgins’s Patent Headache Machine” by Richard C. McClintock. It is consist by several fancy gears in a church-like building. Beside the main machine, there is a little house ironically called “ the sitting house” and an old man with a ball head sitting under a big hammer, which is the end of the machine. When you rotate the handle of the base of the machine, it operates the whole machine and finally gives the man a big strike on his smooth head.
I like the idea and the constructional style and skills of the machine. It makes me laugh because I believe every busy people in this industrial and urbanized society is building his or her own patent headache machine. I hope I can stop build mine. Thank Mr. McClintock. He reminder me the fact that my machine is almost finished.
The gears were really fascinating for me. I took about 30 pictures and videos in every angles of the view of the machine and tried to figure out how it operates. My” special” behavior finally became a part of the artwork. People were interested about why this crazy boy stands around the sculpture for half hour with a camera.
Of course, the emphasis of the reception naturally felt on those delicious foods. On the big table, there were salad, fruit mixed, tacos, pastries, cheesecake, cocktails and chocolate-coated strawberry. Several servers shuttled gently among crowd with plates of beautiful pastries. I cough the moment and took the picture of this server with a big smile. I hanged around among people, artworks and food happily with the relaxed mood. Life is art, isn’t it?