Winter, and All We Need

Here's a little mid-winter update on what has (mostly hasn't) been happening in the garden, what I want to plant for the Spring, and a simple fact of life itself...

I pulled up the cauliflower not because I harvested and ate it all, but because it began to flower and stank my fridge up. A couple of pounds of cauliflower in a big gallon Ziploc went pretty much entirely to waste, and the rest never even made it out of the garden. I will have to remember to grow desirable vegetables from now on. Not all was completely wasted as the plants and un-eaten heads found their way to the bottom of the leaf bin - which brings me to the next topic.

The compost I have been preparing since July is looking really nice, and I stopped adding new things to it (diverting new compost into the leaf bin) on the 1st of the year to allow it to be more thoroughly composted for this spring's garden. I look forward to adding the compost to my gardens here in a few weeks before I plant. I will be sure to post some pictures of that.

As far as what I will be growing... I know I want to grow a lot of corn, squash, peas, and cucumbers this spring, and I think I might plant a few tomatoes, but not as much as I did this past fall. I also want to plant okra because it's easy and it's the only thing that will keep growing after the summer heat sets. I am going to try something called "Three Sisters" which is a method of companion-planting successfully used by the Native Americans. I will post a detailed narrative of the experiment.

Abbey and I went to Ganado to visit her grandparents during the holidays and I saw how her Pa Pa was growing an entire patch of garlic (I planted mine mid-September and nothing had sprouted at that point). He said that every single clove sprouted as I looked down the rows and rows of it. Apparently all I needed to do was water it really good once a week - plants like water - go figure. The cloves I planted in September finally came up around Christmas after laying dormant for three months in the dirt! After all the fertilizer and mulch and waiting, all it wanted was some water. Good thing garlic likes the cool weather, as mine is having quite a delayed growing season. All it needed was water to sprout...

The chemical reactions and miracle for life lay waiting, only needing some H2O.

I guess all we need sometimes is all we need. truly truly...

Travis Forney RN

Wow, that was the hardest exam of my life! The NCLEX is a "computer adaptive test" which means it figures out your competency level and weaknesses and continuously raises the bar throughout the test based on your performance. I walked into the testing center with an air of confidence, most of which was obliterated by the computer (which decided to take me all the way to question 139 before quitting). I had to remember everything from pre-menopausal teaching to celiac disease dietary restrictions, APGAR scoring, drugs and their antidotes, the list goes on. The worst part is waiting the 48 hours before you find out the results... forget trying to enjoy a meal or a movie or a good night's sleep during this time. At 48 hours to the second (0800 this morning for me) the test-taker can look online for their results. What a relief it truly is too see such a simple word.

pass

Take that computer!

How awesome it was to get this result as I began my second day at University Hospital, where I will work as an RN in the trauma center. Wow, praise the Lord.