Sophomore Shenanigans

Hello readers!
Sorry I've been MIA lately. The beginning of my second year of college is proving to be much more busy than I expected it to be. My excursions into horticulture are much different than they were last year, and this, along with my other classes and extra curriculars, have been keeping me on fast forward for the past three weeks. On top of my course work, every Saturday for all three weeks of the semester so far has been a football game which I'm required to rehearse for and play at for marching band. Needless to say, I've had few breaks.
The little break I have now before tomorrow's football game is the little window of time I've found to write.
Like I said before, this semester's horticulture courses are nothing like last semester. Instead of work in the greenhouse, this class is completely plant identification. Our labs consist of excursions outside around campus, learning the Latin and common names of plants. We then have to memorize these names and are quizzed every week. It's pretty tough work, but I've managed to get by pretty well so far. We have midterms next week already, so we'll see how the 20 plant identification goes. Thankfully the class is broken into sections and the final exam isn't cumulative. Instead, it's broken into herbaceous plants and woody plants, with another section that hasn't been quite determined yet for once it's to cold and snowy out for identifying plants outside to be effective.
The one setback to my year so far has been my other requirements to the horticulture major, algebra in particular. I've never been very good at math, so college algebra, a class I'm required to take to enter into the college that offers the horticulture major, has been very difficult for me. Chemistry is going somewhat better, but it's a hard class to keep track of with everything else happening.
With that update, I'll leave you with some pictures of the plants we've been identifying in class.

Back to School!

After many muscle aches, terrible allergies, and many long, hot days on the game field, I've managed to survive my second pre-season "spat camp" for marching band. Now that I've slept it off, it's time to go back to school. In the morning I'll be back in the greenhouse for my "Woody and Herbaceous Plants" class. I'm actually really excited that it's my first class of the new semester.
On the downside, my books (combined) weigh 8.8lbs and have 2,433 pages. I did, however, start reading the authors notes in "Herbaceous Perennial Plants" by Allan M. Armitage tonight and really loved what he wrote. I'll leave you with a snippet before I turn in for the evening.

"On the Meaning of Gardening"
"When gardeners are asked to describe reasons for gardening, three words emerge time and again: therapeutic, creative and exciting...
Therapeutic, because of the feeling that all is well with the world when our hands are in Mother Earth. Therapeutic because when a seed is sown, a cutting rooted, or seedling planted, we have accomplished something important.
Creative, because artistry is an inescapable part of gardening... Each grouping creates vistas of beauty. We do not require a degree in landscape architecture to create such beauty; all we need is the simple love of gardening.
Exciting is a word seldom attributed to gardening. But is it not exciting to watch a garden change with time? To watch Asarum, wild ginger, bull through the soil in early spring, anticipate the popping of the buds of a balloon flower, and anticipate the magic of the re-emergence of resurrection flower, is truly exciting."

I really loved this. I did skip a few sentences, so I apologize. But I'm writing this post from my iPhone so it's much harder to type than on my computer.
Happy September all!
-Abby

Thus Endeth Summer

Today was my last day at home. Sadly, this also means this was my last day caring for my vegetable garden. I leave it in my parents capable hands, but I'll miss having a garden. I'm back to Minnesota in a little more than 12 hours (about 20 house plants coming with me) so my posts will few as the semester gets going. Marching band keeps me really really busy, but I hope to start posting about the Horticulture class I'm taking, similar to what I did with my Thursday Lab posts last semester.
Of course I have to leave the garden right when things are getting really good. I've picked two big tomatoes and I'm sure more are soon to follow. The beans and cherry tomatoes just keep coming and it even looks like we may have a squash or zucchini later this fall.

 

The red pepper just after being picked. It turned out to be surprisingly sweet so we added it to a tasty black bean dip my mom made. 

 

One of the tomatoes a few days before we picked it.

I had a really great time spending this past Saturday morning at our town's Farmer's Market. There's so much fresh produce and local businesses selling breads and pastries, it was making my mouth water.

 

Wild Upper Michigan blueberries and blackberries.

 

Heirloom tomatoes.

 

The market.

 

Herbs.

 

Lots and lots of produce.

 

Michigan apples.

I'm posting late because I've been packing all day and now I need to get some sleep. Starting the 24th until the 2nd of September, I'll be marching and rehearsing with the band from 9am to 10pm and after that school is starting! Summer has flown by but I'm so happy I got to come home and garden for my vacation. Hopefully this semester will be an even bigger step toward that Horticulture major. Math, Chemistry, and another Horticulture course might be a bit challenging, but if I can survive that, I'll have some much needed per-requisites out of the way. Wish me luck!

-Abby

 

The Benefits of a Summer Downpour

Last night brought us one of the first thunderstorms of the month. It rained for at least four hours, if not more, and I woke up to find my vegetable garden practically exploding with overnight changes. Things had started to ripen and beans had popped out of nowhere.

 

 The most startling evidence of this was one of my pepper plants that went from the first picture (take three days ago) to the second picture, taken this afternoon. The rain really got it to start ripening quickly. 

 

These peppers still have a bit to go...

And speaking of peppers, the grocery store peppers are still doing really well. They certainly get more sun than my poor veggie garden that has to endure a bunch of trees blocking some of it's much needed sun.

 

They seem to like it in front of the house. 

I also had my first small harvest of tomatoes. None of the big ones are ripe yet, but I'm starting to see them change color a bit. They're still mostly green though.

 

Cherry tomatoes. :)

 

 

The big tomatoes are still pretty green. Hopefully they'll ripen soon!

The beans burst out after the rain as well. A few days ago, all I saw were flowers, but now I have tons of young beans.

 

Looks like we're going to have lots of beans!

 

Sadly, I only have 16 more days left at home. Which means if things don't get ripe before then, I'll just have to trust my family to take care of the plants. I will have more horticulture posts though, as I'll be taking a course on Woody and Herbaceous plants. :) 

So I leave you with two flower shots of the week. The flower garden is still offering up new plants as the summer goes one. Enjoy!

 

 

The Estivant Pines

Every summer for the past nine years, my family goes camping in the gorgeous north woods of Copper Harbor, MI. This year, my dad took me three miles up a winding dirt road, logging roads forking off in various directions, to the Estivant Pines Nature Preserve.

 

This preserve holds the some of the very last old growth white pines in Michigan and is one of the last virgin stands of trees in the Midwest. Some of these trees are around 600 years old!

 

 

If you can see it, this tree started growing around 1500 and was cut down in 1970.

Walking into the preserve was like stepping back in time. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that the whole Upper Peninsula of Michigan was once like this, never been logged and pristine. The hike became more surreal as we came up on the first remnant of an old tree. This tree seemed to have died naturally and was now standing, hollow and weather worn, in the middle of the path. 

 

My silly lab Molly sitting by the dead tree.

 

You can look up all the way through the tree to the sky above.

Farther into the woods, we came upon the giant trees. The map we'd gotten from the campground guide named this part as "Cathedral Grove" and it was aptly named because they towered over us. It was impossible to walk and crane your neck up to look at them so we did a lot of starting and stopping, my dad holding onto his hat to keep it from falling off as we looked up.

 

 

I couldn't help but hug one of them. It also served the purpose of showing how MASSIVE these trees are!

We went on the second trail and found more of the giant pines but a bit rockier path and had to maneuver up and down some of the hills. The paths are all pretty well worn, but it is rather hill-y in parts. The dog, of course, had an excellent time and ran around smelling everything.

 

 

It was crazy to see trees this big. And, of course, my inner plant nerd and nature lover was geeking out over the history of these gorgeous pines. This forest is also considered a boreal forest and isn't quite as lush as some of the forests to the south. The soil is thin and sits right on top of bedrock, so there's less nutrients here than elsewhere. 

It was a pretty eye-opening hike. And if you're thinking about a vacation for next summer and you love the outdoors, I'd definitely check out Copper Harbor, Michigan. (Or any part of Upper Michigan for that matter!)

If you want to learn more about the pines, here's a link for the page on the Keweenaw Traveler website.

 

A Garden Tea Party

It was my birthday back on the 12th and what did I do? I threw a garden tea party of course. :)
It turned out to be a beautiful summer day, a bit muggier than I would've liked, but we were lucky to escape the rain. I had four of my good friends over, the fifth not able to make it due to being on vacation at the time.
On the menu:
-Tea (English tea and a really good brand of peach tea I've found)
-Cucumber sandwiches (provided by one of my good friends)
-Mini ham and cheese sandwiches
-White cake cupcakes decorated with roses.

I had a really good time decorating with flowers from the garden. The pinks and yellows really looked nice with the tea cups and lace tablecloth.

Since my mom has a pretty cool collection of tea cups, I got to pick out a few mis-matched, but still pretty, cups to use.

This one is actually mine though...

The cupcakes were really fun to decorate. I made my own frosting and set a little aside that I dyed pink and green with food coloring. Once I'd frosted them all with white, I swirled a little pink in the middle with a little green leaf or two to make the rose.

I also went a bit daisy-crazy and stuck daisies in the vines that my dad has trained to wrap around our side porch.

The party went off without a hitch and we all ate way too many little sandwiches and drank way too much tea. But it was a really fun way to celebrate my birthday. :)

Garden Update (because I haven't for a bit): The beans are growing splendidly, I have so many green tomatoes (with a few starting to turn red) that once they all ripen I'm going to need a good salsa recipe to have use for them all and the peppers are doing very well. 

Sorry About the Lack of Posts...

Hello everyone!
First I must apologize profusely for not posting in a while. Our internet connection has been running suuuuuper slow for the last two weeks and I've not been able to get my laptop to connect to the internet sufficiently in order to post.
Second, this post is a notice to say a new post is coming very soon. We've finally acquired a new router and the internet is back up to working speed. :)
Hope you've all been well!
-Abby