Just finished the powerpoint presentation for the class I’m doing at the Master Gardener symposium on Saturday. This Saturday. Don’t think I’ve ever cut down to the wire on something like this before.
Seventy-six slides plus a separate handout because that’s too many slides to print out as a handout. The topic is Gardening To Stop Traffic. I hear they cut it off at 41, which is capacity for the classroom. (I know. Forty-one seems like a strange number to me, too.) Actually, very basic topics like “Composting” are extremely popular this year — I think the bad economy has given lots of people a shove toward growing their own produce. Which, when the August drought hits, they may view with less enthusiasm.
And, no, I definitely do not put a lecture on powerpoint slides and then read the slides to the audience. What a horrifically boring presentation that would be. I’d walk out on a presenter who did that. (I say that, but I’m probably too polite to actually do that. Probably.)
The slides are for pictures and brief notes to help me remember what I meant to say. My favorite combo? At least in MO, dogwoods, regular old-fashioned Vanhoutte spirea, Narcissus ‘Actaea’, and Cerastium, which all bloom along with pink peonies and late pink tulips. If you’ve got quite a few dogwoods in one area and then a whole swoosh of spirea, it’s like this massive blizzard with pink accents. Just breathtaking. It’s really hard to take good pictures, though, with a small camera like mine.
Okay! Now that the gardening thing is done and under control, BACK to writing! But maybe not tonight. It’s eight and I don’t think I’m in the mood (I was in the mood this morning, drat it, and of course it didn’t last till I had time). Since I’m not on a deadline, no need to force it — tomorrow will do.
Even if all I end up doing tonight is playing this keen mahjong game that turns out to be on this new laptop, which is entirely possible.