Finley, Fruit, and Film

This morning bright and early-ish Bird and I headed out to the William L. Finley wildlife refuge where Bird is doing part of her study. The place we were looking at is basically a field dominated by various grasses and small rose bushes. Unlike where we were yesterday, Finley had almost no fruiting plants. There were, as far as I could see, no cherries, only a few apples and some other dark berries on a tree I've yet to identify. There were a number of lovely wildflowers, some that I know by name, but many unfamiliar to me. I took photos of them for later identification.  While at Finley we saw a group of about five Western Kingbirds. They are apparently uncommon in this area, so it was a nice find. They were also terribly cute and talkative. 

On the thesis front, my reading of The Fruit of the Tree continues. I spoke with one of the instructors at school today. She is the Composition Coordinator, in other words she essentially runs the writing program and is my boss when it comes to my capacity as a TA. She gave me some advice about planning out the organization of my thesis, and suggested that I make multiple introductions until I can nail down exactly what I want to focus on in the thesis. I told her that my focus might be shifting from Water to more broad connections between Ecology and Wharton's writing. She did not discourage the idea and suggested looking at Woolf also. I've considered combining a look at Wharton and Woolf before, but in many ways it seems like it might just complicate matters, or prevent me from digging deeply enough into either. I am unsure. The deadline for a Conference proposal I had been hoping to submit is tomorrow and I have nothing, but maybe it's for the best. I have a paper from my Columbia Basin Ecology class coming up (eco-historical look at Pendleton), my thesis to work on, and an English class starting on Monday. On top of all this I signed up to be a Comp. Coordinator Assistant this summer and that involves quite a bit of work that I've yet to attend to. There will be other conferences.

For tonight work is over and we're watching a film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. I read this book some time ago, but so far the film doesn't disappoint.