For this week’s Rose event, I chose to go outside of my comfort zone and joined my fellow Scholars on a trip to the Botanic Gardens at Cornell.  I should preface this with explaining that I am petrified of bees.  I scream whenever I hear a faint buzzing sound- whether it be from a fly, a passing bike or a vibrating cell-phone- and I panic and run the moment one comes into my line of vision.  Therefore, I knew visiting the Botanic Gardens (aka the home of bees) would be an interesting challenge for me.

Despite the crazy hot weather, the trip to the gardens was well worth the walk (which was long).  The tour guide was also extremely knowledgable, which made the trip all the more fascinating.  I thought it was especially great to learn that the visitors’ building was constructed as a gold standard in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and that they used solar energy.  However, my favorite story of the tour guide was about Barbra McClintock- a forward-thinking, novel Cornell alum that won her own Nobel Peace Prize.

I did make one stupid mistake- wearing a floral shirt.  I was only thinking about the perfect aesthetic look for my inevitable photo shoot that I would force my friend to take however, I neglected to realize that bees would see me and think “ooh, pollination time.”  Luckily, I got out of there un-stung (and with some new instagram material).

The highlight of the trip- a beautiful, big white dog.  He initially terrified me as he brushed against me from behind (as I thought he was a bee), but I was able to play with him later on and he was, as the title indicates, a very good boy. 🙂