Winter Wonderland

It's great being back home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula especially because when it snows, it actually retains the look of a winter wonderland for a while. Minnesota is blustery, knocking snow off the trees soon after a storm, if not during. And living in a city means that things are brown and slushy almost instantly after a new snowfall. Not so at my house. Snow looks like it's supposed to. Pristine and beautiful.

Dad and I took our family's dog, Molly, out for a walk to gather some branches for outdoor decoration I've had in mind for a few of my mom's ornaments. She has so many that they don't all fit on the Christmas tree anymore! Across the road there's no development, just trees and the ghost of an old railroad grade that used to run there. Down the hill and through the woods to the sparkling river we went. Molly runs at full tilt, no matter where we're going. I don't know what we'd do with her if we didn't live by the woods where she could run, off-leash.

I forget how low the sun sits in the sky around this time. It was mid-afternoon but the sun still seemed low to me. But it made for some lovely photographs of the light coming through ice and snow coated branches. The cedars are one of my favorite trees. Evergreens in general I have come to miss greatly in the mostly-deciduous Twin Cities.

After collecting branches, we went back to the house and took the car to town to pick up some suet for the birds. Our chickadees sure are spoiled.

Feeling that the dog needed some more exercise (when doesn't she need exercise is the real question) we drove to the beach, a stretch we know to be usually empty. Perfect for throwing her tennis ball. She always astounds me, leaping into the freezing, hypothermia-inducing water after the prized orb. Dad only throws it there a couple times over the course of our stay, just to get her clean. The rest of the throws are land-based, getting her body-temperature up as she tears down the beach, flinging water and sand in every direction.

The waves are still high, but not as high as Monday when we'd attempted to come to this beach. Molly had to have been disappointed when we found the beach being totally eaten by waves. There was no tennis ball chasing for her that day. But today I found some gorgeous aftermath of the high waves, some broken branches covered in a mesmerizing membrane of ice. It caught the sun in such interesting ways and enhanced the color of the wood beneath.

Unrelated to my ice and snow adventures, coming home meant harvesting out as much as I could carry from my plant propagation greenhouse, carting it home with me and offering it to mom. Peppers, tomatoes, basil, a poinsettia, and lots of other things put to good use.

Back in Minnesota, I left some perennials on the unheated steps that lead up to our upper duplex unit. I'm hoping I can get them to go dormant for the rest of the winter. The rosa rugosa my mom offered to take and I have a mum, a hardy hibiscus and a hydrangea that I'll have to find a home for. It might be a relatives house or just a bigger pot on my small porch this coming summer.

Winter Has Come

Like most of you in the Northern and Eastern US, we got hit with snow this weekend, bringing to an end the fall that we thought would last us at least through Thanksgiving. Unlike our usual first snows in Minnesota, this snow (and ice) has stuck, with daytime temperatures hovering in the high 20s at most.

A picture of my walk into St. Paul campus taken from my phone.

Despite this, things are heating up in my Plant Production class and being able to work under the sunlamps a few days out of the week is a godsend. I definitely picked the right major for that reason. My crops are doing well now that I've learned what I need to do in order to fertilize them properly and our lettuce crops are about ready to take home for salad. Now I just need to find a way to get my boyfriend to actually eat salad...
I've also got an eggplant, two cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes that I'll be taking home next week. I'm not a huge cucumber fan so I'll have to find something creative to do with them, or just find a person who likes cukes more than me to take them. If I have the time, I'd love to try frying the eggplant that I have with my roommates deep-fryer.

For my World Food Problems class, my end-of-term paper is looming ever larger on the horizon and I'm still torn about what I want my topic to be. I have to have it finalized by next Tuesday so I'll have to dive into some research this weekend. My original idea is researching the importance seed-saving has in African cultures and how that relates to food security... But if I can't find enough written on that I might have to change to something else. I have a lot of strong feelings about GMOs (although not in the normal hell-bent against them sort of way) that I could write a paper on... Speaking of which, I will probably at least post something here about my opinions on them soon. Regardless, I need a topic that I can research and write about easily because I want to make this paper actually meaningful.

The last few things that have been happening lately have all been reminding me that I'm almost done with school. I met with my academic adviser to finalize my class schedule for next year, I register for those classes tomorrow and, after next week, I'm done with the regular season of marching band for the last time. I don't really know how to handle all of these emotions because there's just a huge, jumbled, confused mess of them. I'm happy and sad and nervous and everything else all at the same time. As many of my friends would say "#SeniorProblems".

And speaking of being done, yesterday was my last home football game as a member of the University of Minnesota Marching Band. Symbolically flipping my uniform overlay to the maroon side of a graduating member at the game was so bittersweet and leaving the field after my last halftime show was one of the hardest things I've had to do. This group has given me so much over the course of my college career and I've made some of the best memories I think I'll ever have of college as a member of it.

Me and my family who came down to see my final show.

I think that's what this winter has mainly brought with it: the realization that I'm going to be done with this stage of my life soon and I have this huge stretch of uncharted territory in front of me. It's not really like the rest of life where I have a set system to work inside of. There's no school where I can just work my way through a more-or-less comfortable set of hoops. Basically I have to be a real person and that's sort of terrifying. Exciting, yes, but definitely terrifying.

First Week of Class

Minnesota decided to welcome back the students of the Twin Cities campus with some of the most bitterly cold weather I've experienced in a long time. Even though the snow and ice can be beautiful, walking from class to class gets frighteningly cold some days.

Regular daytime temps for the first few days of class hovered between -15 and -8 degrees with a wind chill of between -25 and -20. Thankfully over the weekend we got a break and the temperature warmed up a bit, but we're expecting about a high of 9 degrees Friday. Looks like there's no escaping it, so really the only thing you can do is curl up with some hot chocolate, watch the snow and study.

And speaking of studying, from the little time I've had them, my classes this semester seem to be going well so far. I have Soil Science, Intro to Microeconomics, General Biology and Chemistry for the second time (I'm determined to beat it this time around!) All my professors seem really nice and they all lecture really well, which helps when it's 8AM and all I want is to be back in my bed sleeping.

There's not much new to report with my plants. I'm trying to protect them from the drafty area they're in, but I can't move them completely because that's the only part of my apartment that gets any sort of light. My apartment doesn't get any direct sunlight at all, just shaded daytime light, so I'm using a regular desk lamp on them a few hours a day for some warmth and hoping whatever light is getting through the windows is sufficient for their photosynthetic needs. Over break, I picked up a few new pots to replant a few things in and, my biggest find, a small, egg-shaped terrarium which I'm currently attempting to root an African Violet leaf cutting in.

 

The two in front are the ones that have new pots. I think they're pretty happy with all the new space they have to spread out in. :)

Please forgive the photo quality. I took the pictures at night and there really wasn't that much light in my living room. Really the only other thing new with plants so far is I think I may have gotten rid of the scale attacking my umbrella plant for good. This time, I used a 1 part water, 1 part peroxide mixture and applied it to the leaves with a cue-tip. I washed all the leaves with water afterward, just in case. I haven't seen any of the nasty patches on the leaves yet, so hopefully they're all gone.

That's about all I have to report for now. I have a feeling the next month or so is going to be pretty slow since it's winter and I'm pretty limited to what I can do to houseplants at the moment. Hope you're all staying warm! :)