Adventures in the Polly Mobile 2: Hanging out near Kingston, RI (aka a Summer Town in Winter)

It was a cold, dreary day in Kingston, Rhode Island, as you would expect for this time of year. Not yet the bitter cold of January, but definitely getting grumpy.

East Matunuck State Beach

 

(Click above for photos)

I had to get up super early in the morning to get a parking pass to save my car (and my wallet) from the college parking Nazis. Once I was up I just decided to go post up at Hope Student Center to catch up on some work and get a super reasonably-priced coffee. As the morning zombies filtered in, I realize I blended in, but also didn't. There were people pouring over flash cards and staring blankly at their computers, hopes that the information they needed would beam into their sleep-deprived brains. I was just hanging out. There was only a slight tinge of urgency to my work, but I was spared the future-crushing pressure of being under the academic wire.

Tessa let me know when she was done and we met at the Horridge Greenhouses (here's their blog). I took a quick jaunt through the grounds of the botanical garden to check out the collections. It was a modest offering and came complete with signage! I've really developed a taste for the need to have tags on plants and I was happy to see them (and the Magnolia grandiflora 'Bracken's Brown Beauty').

It was a low-key afternoon and evening exploring southern Rhode Island. Not much was going on and Tessa and I were reminded of the California Dreamin' Mad Libs fiasco that occurred on the way back from the Woody Plant Conference because it was definitely a 'Califonia Dreamin'' day as we were standing on East Matunuck State Beach.

We ended up walking through a forest of Juniperus virginiana that looked like something out of a horror movie and to take the edge off of the experience we contemplated what kind of monster we might encounter. Apparently people with chainsaws were the first thing she thought of. What an irony.