Weed or Not a Weed, that is the Question

The craziness of spring classes is almost done, but the number of questions we get during the day will increase drastically. The questions that are the most frustrating are the weed id/random plant id ones. Now, common weeds and plants - not a problem. What is a challenge is when someone brings in a few leaves, usually mostly wilted, and wants to know what it is and what to do with it.

These occurrences can usually be categorized in two ways: Unknown Plants in the Lawn and Unknown Plants in the Flower Bed. Each has its own problems, pitfalls, and headaches. To be fair, 7 or 8 out of 10 samples are easy and straightforward to identify and deal with. I have a whole novel in my head about this. However, I don't feel that it is really a good idea to spew that all out onto the Internet, at least while I am still gainfully employed at my current job. Sometime in the future, do ask me about it, and I'd be happy to spew.

Snapshots

~~~1~~~

So I have made it to my sole "free weekend" in the middle of the spring craziness. (To be fair, two weeks from now, Easter Weekend, I technically am free, but...it's Easter. Not quite the same as "totally free with nothing to do." Although, I guess using that definition this is not a "free weekend" because there's lots to do! Well - except that inactivity is being forced by the weather. But more on that later.) Anyway, next weekend is our Tree Festival/Vegetable Gardening Workshop/I'm speaking in the afternoon at the Harvey County Garden Show in Newon, KS. Then Easter, then April 18th I'm teaching a lawn care class for 3 hours in the morning. The next weekend I conned Steven into going to Topeka with me, since I'm speaking a vegetable workshop there. Then we have Herb Day, which is the day before my birthday. Then...I think...other than the Farmers' Market, my weekends may be gloriously free for...well...awhile anyway.

~~~2~~~

So speaking of the weather, we are currently in a Blizzard Warning. Sounds delightful, right? Well, this is the first "blizzard" I've been in that doesn't involve snow. Grr... Actually, it has been throwing freezing rain, or something like that I had to drive across town at noon for one of the local TV news shows, and after that I decided that I would rather take a half day of annual leave rather than drive back to the office and then back home in the evening. After I made that decision, the roads seem to improve a little bit. But I really need a break, so the 4 hours off is worth it! On the other hand, I'd really appreciate it if some of these other cities in Kansas would stop hogging all the snow. Some of them have 7, 10, or 15 inches of snow. We have none! Just nasty accumulating frozen pellets of gunk. The purple splotch on the radar just keeps staying on top of us.

~~~3~~~

During our trip to St. Louis a couple weeks ago, I read Rise to Rebellion, a novel by Jeff Shaara about the Revolutionary War. I have always loved reading about that period of history, both from a "daily life" standpoint and from the political/army standpoint. Now I'm working my way through The Glorious Cause, the sequel novel. So far, I think I like the first one better, just because it covers more of the politics and perspectives of events leading up to the war. What I think is the most amazing, that you often don't think about or realize, is how long the Revolutionary War was. We all know the dates from 1775, 1776....Lexington & Concord, the Declaration of Independence, etc... and Valley Forge (1777-8). Yorktown, 1781. The final treaty was signed in September 1783. 1776-1783. That's 7 years. 7 years of fighting back and forth, forming an army from whoever would volunteer, constantly retreating and reforming, trying merely to survive to fight another day toward independence.

~~~4~~~

Since I had some free time this afternoon, I took the opportunity to get the kitchen totally clean for the first time in...weeks, I think. And then I promptly turned around and started getting it dirty by starting some bread and then making dinner. But after dinner I mostly cleaned it up again. Hopefully we'll be able to keep it in better shape. Now for the rest of the apartment...

~~~5~~~

Other things on the to-do list for this weekend (just in case you actually care about all the tedious detials of my life): clean the apartment, grocery shopping, finish taxes (KS income, and Steven's), shopping at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and.....you know, I think there was more on this list, but I can't remember anything else. That doesn't actually seem like a terrible list. (At least it doesn't as long as you can't see the apartment!) Oh yeah. Buying and writing and mailing Thank You notes. We have a few left from the wedding, and then a whole bunch from last weekend in Wisconsin.

~~~6~~~

Maybe we will soak our shiitake mushroom block again this weekend to encourage it to put on its second flush of mushrooms! Did I ever post pictures of it the first time around? I don't think I did. Here's one from when the first mushrooms were just starting to develop.

~~~7~~~

And, if you're interested, here's a couple pictures from the display garden we did at the Wichita Garden Show.

Well, then...

Yeah, it's been ages since my last blog post. I know. I'm surprised you still read this. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that there will be any blog posting until after March 9th. (Who knows? We all know that when I say I'm going to be too busy to post, I invariably find time to post something of interest.)

Reasons for not posting recently and not posting in the near future(in no particular order):

1. Reading other blogs is more interesting that writing a blog post.

2. Watching TV while playing stupid computer games is more mindless than writing a blog post.

3. Writing thank you notes is more productive that writing a blog post.

4. Reading books is more interesting than writing a blog post. Recently I have been reading:
- Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark
- Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge
- Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish by Tom Shachtman
- Other books that I actually haven't gotten around to reading yet.

5. Day to day life and busy schedules and such.

6. The Wichita Garden Show is coming up. We start construction and loading up tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon. I will be living at the Garden Show from now until some time on Monday, March 9th. After which point I will be sleeping. I'm sure I will have interesting stories to share, but it remains to be seen when/if I'll ever have the time/motivation to write and post them.

7. I voluntarily hooked myself on a video game called Kingdom Hearts. I am terrible at it, because I didn't grow up playing video games (which isn't a bad thing, really). But I'm to the point where I usually remember what most of the buttons and dealies on the controllers do. This game requires much less thinking than writing a blog post.

8. I can't think of any more lame excuses for my lack of posting. Really, I can't.

March will probably be as lacking in blog posts as February has been. One weekend at the Garden Show. One weekend in St. Louis for a friend's wedding. One weekend in Wisconsin for our belated wedding reception. One weekend at home doing nothing (hopefully!). Then comes Tree Festival/Vegetable Gardening Workshop weekend. Then another weekend free. Then a Saturday New Lawn-Owner Clinic. Then a Saturday in Topeka speaking for a Veg. Gardening workshop. Then Herb Day weekend. Then....I don't know! I hope my weekends remain blissfully free for most of the summer!

Snapshots

~~~1~~~

I've had a couple of busy weeks at work, which is nice, and not wholly unexpected. Between meetings and teaching classes, I've had 2-3 nights taken up each week, as well as a couple of exhausting days. This last week I taught a class on Tuesday evening about "Growing a 'Fruitful' Landscape," discussing ways to incorporate fruiting plants in the home landscape. There were 99 people at that class, which was excellent attendance for a very specific topic of interest.

The next morning was my first gardening class in the Hispanic community. I had to go into work a little early, because I'd been too busy and hadn't had time to finish translating the presentation into Spanish. (I was teaching in English, but had handouts available in Spanish in order to facilitate both languages.) So I spent 2 hours translating, then rushed off to that class. Sadly, I only had 2 people in attendance, neither of whom needed the Spanish handouts.

This is pretty consistent with the ups and downs of Extension work. Some things go over well, others don't, and it's hard to predict which will be which. With all fairness to the program in the Hispanic community - it's a very new program, and I'm still making contacts and getting established. It can take years to develop something like that.

~~~2~~~

Steven's family gave us a Mushroom Patch for Christmas, and we are watching it grow mushrooms as we speak! It's a Shiitake patch, and it seems to be behaving itself admirably. Hopefully I'll get around to taking a picture or two and posting them, eventually. It has only been sitting out in the living room under it's humidity tent for 1 week, but already there are many baby mushrooms poking out!

~~~3~~~

Last night we ate Indian food for dinner, and it was tasty! Steven cooked up some Tandoori Chicken from the Joy of Cooking and I made some stir-fried cabbage. Sounds disgusting, right? Wrong! It was really tasty, and simple to make. We had half a head of purple cabbage left from making a bean soup last weekend, so I decided to try this recipe. To paraphrase the recipe, I heated 1/4 c. oil to the smoking point, threw in 1/2 tsp. mustard seeds, then 1/2 tsp. turmeric, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper. After a quick stir, in goes the cabbage, sliced thin. Stir to coat, then pop the lid on and let it steam for 5 minutes. Mmm...tasty!

~~~4~~~

We are finally getting mostly settled in the apartment. I got a lot of cleaning done yesterday, and I think the second bedroom is organized to a livable state. There is even some floor space! Unfortunately, we are still short on bookshelves. Even more unfortunately, I'm not sure where we'd put another bookshelf, even if we had one! Sadly, clutter seems to accumulate on the counters and floors no matter how hard I try to keep them clean.

~~~5~~~

We are quickly winding towards the Wichita Garden Show. I have to say, that I really wish that it was March 8th rather than February 8th today! I just want the whole thing to be done with! The show itself isn't so bad. It's the preparations that are a killer! Since I'm in charge of our display garden this year, I have to manage the construction and the herds of volunteers working on it. It is rather a daunting task, all things considered.

Snapshots

~~~1~~~

I had my first dress fitting with the seamstress on Wednesday. Happily, the dress fits beautifully, so all there is to do is the bustling and a couple minor things. My next fitting will be in 2 weeks, just before we are headed out for Christmas.

~~~2~~~

As we move through December, our fall classes wind down at work, but Garden Show planning speeds up. I have one more Market Farmer class, we have only 1 more Master Gardener Basic Training class (after this week), most of the committees are having their "Christmas Party" meetings, and so on. This is a good thing, of course, since I've got plenty of other things to do before January.

~~~3~~~

The Garden Show is 3 months from now. Since we are doing a vegetable display garden, I'm doing a lot of the planning and planting of veggies. Today I planted tomato, brussels sprouts, and globe artichoke seeds. Hopefully everything turns out okay, since I really have no idea what I'm doing.

~~~4~~~

Since it's now December, and the temperature is going to get down to a "frigid" 22 degrees, I decided to harvest some of the things I've been keeping going out in our demonstration garden. I harvested the rest of 4 varieties of lettuce, the remaining purple carrots, and the gold beets. Yum! I gave some of the produce away to staff, and the rest I made into a salad for MG Basic Training. The lettuces and carrots were gorgeous...maybe I'll get around to transferring some pictures to the blog.

~~~5~~~

Is it just me or have there been absolutely no movies worth going to see for months?!? Every few weeks I think, "Gee, we could go to a movie for something fun to do." Then I look up the movie listings and realize that there is absolutely nothing that looks enticing enough to pay too much money to see. Supposedly there are some movies coming out in December that are worth seeing, but I don't think we're going to have much time for movie-going.

~~~6~~~

I hope the Federal government doesn't bail out the automakers. I'm sorry that people will get hurt from losing jobs. But people are going to get hurt just as bad, if not worse, in the long run if the government keeps spending money it doesn't have. And that's all I've got to say about that.

*Gasp* ...and...RUN!

So I haven't been around recently, as I warned you would be the case in November. (Or at least I meant to, but I may have forgotten to mention it.) November is now half over, and this coming week promises to be crazy. My second market farmer class is Monday night, then I'm off to Topeka for the Turf Conference. I'll be immersed in the joys of turf on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then I'll be in Emporia Thursday morning for a Grape/Wine Industry listening tour. Thursday is (as always) Master Gardener training. Friday morning at 7 a.m. is our monthly hort advisory group meeting, and then MG advisory board meeting. Somewhere in there I have to fit in at least one other meeting. Ugh.

I'm planning to start a new "feature" based on a book Steven found in his Grandmother's house when they were cleaning it out last year. We'll see if I get around to posting anything from it this week.

If I don't show up before, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Snapshots

~~~1~~~

Our goal is to have all the wedding invitations mailed by this weekend. I suppose that would require me to work on addressing envelopes, wouldn't it? Or work on printing invitations? Or other stuff like that? Yes, that would be correct. And yet again, I am sitting here typing a blog post rather than doing something semi-productive. Oops.

~~~2~~~

On the wedding, my dress is here! Yay! I got to try it on last weekend, and it fits pretty well. It will need a few nips and tucks, but that's typical. The bodice actually needs to be taken in an inch or two, because while it has a lace-up back closure, it will look better if you can actually see the lacing. It will also fit better if it can be tied up tighter. Of course, I could consider gaining weight...or NOT! After all, Thanksgiving and Christmas are both between now and the wedding, so I can't help but gain some weight...especially if I eat too many of the green cornflake wreath cookies. I could probably live on those for a whole day.

~~~3~~~

I went into Walmart yesterday to buy some tulip bulbs to teach a class this morning, and I found that I had to wade my way through Christmas decorations and Christmas dishes, and wrapping paper and ribbons and fake poinsettias (ACK!). Seriously. Isn't this a little bit much? I did see some very pretty blue ribbon that could be nice for wedding decorations. But that does not redeem the fact that Walmart is decked out for Christmas before Halloween.

~~~4~~~

Does anyone else find it annoying that Barack Obama has bought 30 minutes of airtime tonight? Good. I would be disturbed if you didn't. I think I would still find it annoying if it was John McCain buying airtime. Ugh. I will be SO HAPPY when this election is over. I will be even happier after the media gets over drooling over Obama. Double ugh.

~~~5~~~

Tomorrow I'm teaching the fruit class for our Master Gardener Basic Training. I feel like I'm trying to cram too much information into 3 hours. You want to try fitting comprehensive information on apples, pears, cherries, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and grapes into 3 hours with a break and an activity? Yeah, it doesn't work too well. The problem is that so few of our MGs are even interested in fruit, let alone have any experience with growing it. The only reason they need the information is to answer questions on Hotline, which won't apply to all of them. They probably will forget most of the information by the time they need to use it anyway.

However, I will make the attempt to teach the information in an interesting way, force them to think a little bit, and hope to encourage a few of them to try growing fruit in the future.

~~~6~~~

Next Monday begins the craziness that is the month of November. My classes for market farmers/gardeners is getting some nice publicity, and I have people registered from a number of locations, so that makes me feel good that I'm offering something that is needed. Hopefully the classes go well, the participants get some good information and ideas, and I get some good contacts. I'm also seeing an increase in people coming in to ask about planting fruit for commercial production, which I think is a wide open market in this area. We have next to no commercial fruit operations. Agritourism places could do a booming business here.

~~~7~~~

Ummm.....ok. I guess I ran out of things to say. I guess this means that I have to go to addressing envelopes. On that note, if you know that you have changed your address in the last couple months, please let me know so I don't have to hunt it down!

Snapshots

~~~1~~~

Well, I'm back from the Annual Extension Conference. The actual "conference" part left quite a bit to be desired...there were good bits, bad bits, and tedious bits...but it was nice to see other agents and have time to network and share ideas. I will say that I'm ready to be back in the office. Between Master Gardener Conference, being sick last month, and now Annual Conference, I feel like I've been out of the office a long time. I have a lot to do to get several classes ready to go and advertised!

~~~2~~~

My dress is here! Yay! It was scheduled to ship yesterday, so I was hoping that they were shipping it overnight or something like that. The idea of an expensive dress sitting in a shipping dock or bouncing cross country in a truck for several days was not to my liking. So in the plans for the weekend is going to try on my dress. Hopefully I will then have a better idea about what accessories I need to go with it. I really need to find shoes, too...

~~~3~~~

Also on the wedding front, I need to start addressing envelopes. And I really need to spend more than a passing thought on what we are doing for reception decorations. Yeah. Really. On the positive side, you can probably look forward to more blog posts as I am looking for a way to procrastinate on wedding details!

~~~4~~~

Is anyone else ready for the election to be over? Ugh. If only there was a way to make sure all the morons were gone after the election... Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that all the morons will disappear... Ah well. I worked my way through a sample ballot that the Wichita Eagle had available. There are 32 races/issues on my ballot. That's ridiculous. Luckily (or maybe unluckily), about half of those are judge races, and more than half of the judge races are uncontested. That is easier, if perhaps not ideal in all respects.

Anyway, they had semi-helpful bios and answers to questions, which was nice. Although...well...I did say only semi-helpful. I just don't know as much about some of the candidates and races as I would like to. I think that takes time when you live in a new location.

~~~5~~~

Hmm....I know I had other extremely interesting things to say, but they have slipped my mind. Ah well. I expect you'll all be able to wait until next time I write.

Moved

Whew! I am all moved to my (eventually "our") new apartment. With some extra help, we got everything moved in about 5 hours. Unfortunately, my calf muscles are still complaining vociferously about the number of trips up and down the stairs to my 3rd floor apartment. At least we were moving everything down rather than up.

The new apartment is nice and home-y. As of this afternoon, I have everything...yes, EVERYTHING, unpacked and put away. The few things that don't have a home have been sorted and repacked into boxes and stored in the closet of the second bedroom. We might even be able to fit most of Steven's stuff in!

As soon as I got done unpacking, I started packing again - this time to go to our Extension Annual Conference. Three and a half days of meetings, seminars, sessions, luncheons, etc. Hmm...yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Perhaps I'll have a report later on.

Perhaps I'll also get back to posting the regular sandwiches and plants and other such updates by next week, although I don't really make any promises that my schedule is slowing down!

Snapshots

Hi! Yes, I do still exist. This seems to be a trend. I post a bunch of stuff, then disappear for awhile. This disappearance is really less about me being a delinquent blogger and more about me being sick and then busy as a result of being sick. Anyway, this post will invariably be long, because instead of posting 16 mini-posts, I'm going to just post a miscellaneous bunch of stuff at once.

~~~1~~~

The last time I posted was way back in September, and I was sick for then entire following week. Then I got put on antibiotics and spent another week recovering. I missed 5 days of work (well...technically it was only 4, because I was silly and went in for a couple hours on a couple different days even though I was feeling horrible.). When I finally went to the doctor, the diagnosis was a great combo of flu-sinus infection-bronchitis. Yuck! No wonder I felt terrible.

~~~2~~~

I have a new blog in my sidebar! And...you guessed it...hence a Blog of the Week! The new blog is called Heart of the Mission. It is written by my dear friend Nettie, who belongs to a awesome group called InnerChange. She's going to be sharing stories about her life in the crazy city of San Francisco, CA! So stop by and visit her occasionally!

~~~3~~~

I am sitting here in the middle of making Chai Latte Cupcakes. The recipe is from a book of vegan cupcake recipes that I received as a shower gift from Ruth and Nicole. No, I haven't gone vegan. But since I'm just starting to try the recipes, I want to see how they are going to work with both non-dairy and dairy ingredients. So I'm making 2 batches...one with soy milk and yogurt and the other with cow milk and yogurt. I don't think it should make a big difference, but it will be an interesting comparison.

In case you were wondering how I can blog "in the middle" of making cupcakes...well...I'm at Steven's place, and so I discovered that I'm missing some of the spices I needed (ground cloves and cardamom). I asked if he had them when we were at the grocery store, and he said yes. When I actually got to the baking part though, I discovered that what he actually had were whole cloves and coriander. Coriander and cardamom are not equivalent. So he's out buying me spices, and I'm blogging. (Actually, he just got back, so I'm going back to cupcake making. I'll be back to finish this post shortly...)

Okay, the vegan batch is cooling and the dairy batch is in the oven. These cupcakes are topped with a dusting of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg after they are completely cool. They smell pretty tasty! They aren't too hard to make. The most "complicated" part is almost-boiling the milk and steeping black tea in it for 10 minutes. Otherwise, very easy.

I'm making these cupcakes to take to potluck at the office tomorrow. No, Steven and I aren't going to eat 24 cupcakes all by ourselves.

UPDATE: After a taste test, both versions are very good. The vegan version was a touch fluffier while the dairy version had a stronger flavor of the spices and tea. I don't know if the fluffiness was due to the different ingredients or due to the fact that the batter sat with the leavening agents in it for 30 minutes while waiting for the final spices.

~~~4~~~

Tomorrow is Columbus Day, which means that our offices are closed. It is not a holiday however. It is a staff inservice day. So in the morning we are doing True Colors training, which should be interesting. Then we are having potluck. The afternoon will be devoted to office/file cleaning and departmental work. We are going to be doing some long-range (read: 3 months) planning and Garden Show planning. Then maybe I will do some file cleaning. I have 3 file drawers of stuff, and I can probbaly throw away some of it.

~~~5~~~

This past Thursday-Saturday was State Master Gardener Advanced Training Conference. (Why do conferences always have such cumbersome long names? Seriously. Maybe they have doubts about their own value and importance?) So I was in Manhattan, KS with the other Hort staff, 50 of our MGs, and a bunch of other MGs and Hort agents from around the state. I taught a class about edible flowers on Friday afternoon. Most of the classes I attended were not very earth-shattering or exciting. A couple of them were well done. But they were also on a level for the Master Gardeners, not professional horticulturists. I did discover that one of the other hort agents, who we characterize as a "turf guy" actually loves tree fruit. And I spent 15 minutes sharing about growing potatoes and what exactly are "new potatoes" with one of the other hort agents.

~~~6~~~

This week is moving week. Yes, I'm moving...again! I'm actually sick of moving. Rather, I'm sick of all the details involved in changing your address. My address isn't really changing this time, just my apartment number. I'm moving from Apt. 624 to Apt. 903 at the same address. So this may be your notice. I'm moving from my one bedroom, third floor apartment to a two bedroom, first floor apartment. The theory is that after Steven and I are married, we will be able to fit all our stuff in...or at least stack a bunch of stuff in that second bedroom, er...storage room. So we will have a guest bed, you are welcome to visit us. We just make no guarantee that you will be able to find the bed.

~~~7~~~

I'm teaching the vegetable class of our MG Basic Training this coming Thursday. Hopefully I will encourage a lot of our MGs to think outside the box regarding growing vegetables. I'm also planning to make a salad for the lunch potluck with a bunch of veggies from our demo garden. We have some very tasty Watermelon Radishes out there that I think will really set off a salad. The Cucamelons are finally producing, and we still have a few cherry tomatoes on the vines. I think I'll be able to get a good salad out of it.

Okay, I guess that's it for now. I'll try to get around to more updating later this week.

Back Home!

The second week of the Spanish course went well, although honestly, I found it a bit slow and boring. Probably less boring than slow. (I spent parts of several different days trying to see how many words I could remember and write in Russian - not very many!) We didn't get to any tenses or moods of Spanish that I remember struggling to figure out before. Languages have always been pretty easy for me, but I think what made the difference this time is that I've been reading and speaking it more in the last 6 months or so. Therefore, I'm much more comfortable with some of the easier tenses and parts of speech (pronouns, direct and indirect objects, future tense) than I used to be. I still need some work on the more complex tenses/moods that are usually used with compound sentences and all the different clauses that can occur in them. Luckily, I'm pretty good with my English grammar, so the Spanish grammar is easier. But still...some things are a challenge to figure out. However, it was a great opportunity to practice speaking and brush up on things in general. Overall, I really enjoyed the class.

We flew back to Kansas on Saturday. We left Portland, OR at 10:30 a.m., then landed in Houston at 5 p.m. (I got to watch KungFu Panda in Spanish though, so that was kinda fun!) We boarded the flight for Kansas City at 6:30 p.m., but we had to wait for some people from a connecting flight (and their luggage), so we didn't actually leave until 7:30 p.m. So, by the time we landed, got our luggage, etc, it was 9:45 p.m. Steven and I got back to Wichita about 1 a.m.

It is definitely warmer here. It was barely 70 degrees in Washington on Friday. It's about 100 degrees here today. Eek! Yes, it's hot, but overall, I'm not minding it terribly much. Our classroom was so cold all the time that it's actually quite lovely to be warm.

It was a bit of a culture shock when I went to the grocery store though. The peaches were half the size of the ones in Washington. The produce was all quite sad looking, really. I also stopped by the Demo Garden at the office. The tomatoes were all really sad looking, and the squash, eggplant, and cucumbers are in poor shape - not because of the weather, but because the crew didn't HARVEST ANYTHING! Argh! Squash, eggplant, cucumbers all tend to stop producing if they aren't regularly harvested. Ah well...it shall be a "teachable moment" on Tuesday.

I am feeling slightly justified in my defense of heirloom tomatoes though, because my favorite variety is looking beautiful and healthy, even compared to the "best" hybrids of Kansas. Granted, it is much later producing than the hybrids, but if it tastes better and is more vigorous, I sure don't care!

I have meetings at least 2 evenings this week, but other than that, I think my August is pretty quiet - in general. I'm sure my desk will be covered with things to deal with when I go it tomorrow. Good luck to me!

2 Days Down...

In case you were wondering, we successfully made it to Portland and then to Longview, WA. The flights were relatively uneventful, except for the large numbers of small children on the second leg of the flight. I have never seen that many kids on an airplane at one time. Even more annoying, was the number of poor parents accompanying said children. Yikes. I'm sure dealing with a 5 year old boy and an 11 year old boy on a 3 hour flight is not easy...but some things should go without saying. Such as the fact that alternately ignoring and then slapping kids for certain behaviors is not effective discipline. Yeah, I know I'm not a parent yet, but some things don't take a rocket scientist (hi honey!) or an advanced parenting degree.

Anyway, we got to Longview by about 1 p.m. (PDT) Of course, the hotel was not ready for us to check in yet, so we decided to go exploring. We drove west on Hwy. 30 and stopped in a really cute small town called Astoria and wandered around their Sunday market. We bought some Ranier cherries, blueberries, and raspberries to snack on. Then we continued driving. We drove to Seaside, which incidentally, is right on the Pacific Ocean. We visited the beach, and the ocean. Seaside is also the end of the Lewis & Clark trail, so there is a monument there too. This is interesting because the Lewis & Clark trail also goes through Kansas City, and I recall seeing signs for it when Steven and I were up in KC for me to catch my flight. Luckily, it didn't take us as long to get all the way from Kansas to the Pacific Ocean as it did Lewis & Clark!

The scenery is awesome, which was pretty much expected. The weather is also great. No 99 degree temperatures here! We could see Mt. St. Helens as we were driving up to Longview, although while we are in the town (in the valley) we can't actually see it because of the hills/mountains. I am definitely planning to go up to one of the observatories while I'm here.

Oh, the Spanish classes, you say? Yeah, well, we've had 2 days so far and it has been almost entirely review for me. I've picked up a few things here and there. It's also nice to be able to freely practice speaking with other people who are not concerned about mistakes. I don't think I've improved much yet, but I'm sure I'll be somewhat improved by the end of the class. Looking at the syllabus, I don't think we are going to cover anything that is really new to me, although some of the topics I probably didn't learn thoroughly in the past. We shall see. But I'm definitely not having a problem keeping up so far, which is nice.

Other than that, I don't have much news. The only other things I could tell about are not necessarily "bloggable." We shall see.

Voy a Washington!

Voy a la ciudad de Longview en el estado de Washington para dos semanas. Estoy asistado un instituto de inmersion de espanol. (Lo siento...a esta compuadora no puedo usar acentos.)

Mini Web Safari and Sweet Corn

It's been quite awhile since I've done anything remotely resembling a Web Safari, but I only have a few links that I'm intending to share, so I'm combining this with a short thought on proper selection of sweet corn varieties.

First up - I found this article interesting, partly because it goes against what lots of churches like to promote: Unchurched People Prefer Traditional Churches This is actually referring to architecture and such, but an interesting article, nonetheless. (Is nonetheless really a word? The spell checker didn't highlight it for me, so it would seem to be somewhat acceptable. Kind of a strange word though - very German in the way of crunching words together to make a new word.)

The New York Times has a really interesting, and surprisingly, quite warm article about Rush Limbaugh.

Just in case you've never seen this county-by-county map of the Generic Term for Pop/Soda/Coke.

Sweet Corn
I bought some sweet corn from the main sweet corn farmer at the market this morning. I have to say that I was disappointed. Granted, I was raised on certain varieties of sweet corn, and I have an affinity for them. I also found one variety out in Ohio that I really, really like. (Mirai) Unfortunately, the growers here are enamored with bicolor varieties (which is fine if that is what you like, although I think they are just silly). The variety was also a sugary enhanced variety, and I much prefer SuperSweets. They are much sweeter, have better shelf life, and have a nice crunch. I personally like my sweet corn crunchy, although I know other people don't. Their loss.

Leaf Spots, Weird Bugs, Brown Grass, and Such

Work has been going well, and it seems that I'm finally staying fairly consistently busy. Part of that is because I have networked and/or invented enough work to keep myself busy. I have the regular calls and walk-ins to work with, depending on if the Master Gardeners need the support or if it is during a time when the Master Gardeners are in the office or not. I am also teaching a gardening class at one of the local day camps every week.

The hot topics right now are brown patch on fescue lawns, why are my cucumbers/squash/tomatoes flowering but not setting fruit?, black rot on grapes, and leaf diseases on tomatoes. Pretty straight-forward for the most part. Occasionally we get some different things, but those seem to be the most prevalent. The soil tests have been slowing down quite a bit, since most people have their lawns or gardens planted for the spring.

The main thing that's keeping me busy is preparing for the day camps. I could probably do the preparation in less time, but I'm a perfectionist. The first week of day camp, I only had about 25-30 kids. Last week (week 4), I had about 45 kids. I'm tentatively planning for about 50 this next week. The first week of camp, we planted tomatoes and peppers in containers. We made observations about the plants, and made a few hypotheses. (And discussed what a hypothesis was.) Since then, we have been measuring the plants every week and counting the number of flower buds/flower/fruit that are developing on the plants. Last week we fertilized and watered. (It's been so rainy that we haven't needed to water much.) We've also dissected flowers and plants, done skits about pollination, tasted different herbs, and drawn landscapes that we would like to have in our yards. Tomorrow one of the Master Gardeners is bringing her worm composting bin for the kids to learn about. Then I think we are going to learn about selecting fruits and vegetables in the grocery store by having a Beauty Contest. In the remaining 3 weeks, we are going to cover trees, insects, and what a farmer does/where our food comes from.

After that is over, I'm going to be heading to Washington State for two weeks for a Spanish Immersion Camp. Next week is the County Fair. August is the month for Master Gardener applications and interviews. September is the State Fair. All in all, I'm going to be pretty busy for the rest of the year.

Chemicals

How interesting people are. And what a contrast it makes for my day. We have been getting a lot of questions during the past couple weeks about spray schedules for fruit trees. Most people are having one of two problems: they have peach leaf curl (a fungal disease) on their peach trees, or they have had "wormy" fruit in the past and want to prevent it this year. Both of these are recurring problems for fruit trees, whether home orchards or commercial, and getting good quality fruit requires treatment/prevention of the pests.

We have a multi-page publication that discusses home fruit pest control in depth, which we use as a reference and send out frequently. The publication covers both conventional and organic pesticides. What makes it interesting is that sometimes we have people come in who have absolutely no fear or concern about chemicals. We had one man this afternoon who was so upset about no longer having access to certain more harsh chemicals that he wanted to get a pesticide applicators license so that he could buy and use them.

(Certain chemicals that are available for homeowner use are sometimes removed from the market and become "Restricted Use," meaning that only those who have passed a written test and are certified applicators can purchase and use them. This is usually done because it is found that the active ingredient is a possible carcinogen, has effects on reproductive systems, or has widespread negative effects on birds or aquatic life. Not bad reasoning, you probably agree...)

Anyway, this particular man was very upset about not being able to use these restricted pesticides on his tomatoes and other plants. I have no evidence, but I have a feeling that this man is not going to follow the labels when they say what plants they may be safely used on if something he used to spray is no longer on the list. Ugh. I'm not afraid of chemicals like this, but you have to have a healthy respect for them and follow the labels.

Then we get the people who come in asking for an organic control for their pest problems. And there's nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly fine to prefer to use fewer synthetic chemicals. However, what these people want is a way to prevent all fungal and insect problems without using any chemicals. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but "Organic" produce does not mean that it is pesticide-free. It doesn't even mean that it is synthetic chemical free. A lot of the organic allowed pesticides are actually synthetic formulations of naturally occurring compounds, which is why they are allowable under organic production systems.

Anyway, needless to say, the people that don't want to use chemicals really just don't want to spray anything at all. They are less than pleased that there is no way to protect their fruit without spraying, and take a lot of convincing.

I guess the second type of person is the one I prefer, because their choices are much less harmful in the long run...except possibly to the fruit tree that may be over-stressed by the myriad of diseases and insects that it must combat. The first type of person really cannot be convinced, even with education, that they should be more judicious in their use of chemicals. The second type of person is usually open to education about the products, they just have some misunderstandings about chemicals and what the proper role of pesticides should be.

I have to be honest that I don't particularly like spraying pesticides, but it does depend on what chemical I'm using. It helps me when I know what my active ingredient is, what the mode of action is, and what side-effects, if any, there are. Unfortunately, it's kind of a challenge to get the average homeowner to the point where they understand those things.

Exhaustion

I have now worked for 13 straight days, and more than 10 hours/day for several of them. I'm tired. The Wichita Garden Show went well, although apparently it was much more sparse and scaled back than it has been in past years. I have no frame of reference, so I try to stay out of the speculation ring. This past week was busy with meetings and playing catch up, but I didn't really feel as though I accomplished much because the last two days were spent in Manhattan at Hort Agent meetings, so the pile I cleared off my desk at the beginning of last week is right back where it was a week ago. This morning we had a Master Gardener work day in the demonstration garden. We had about 6" of old, semi-composted wood chip mulch to dig out and haul away from around all the raised beds. As I said, I'm tired. And I know I'm going to be really sore tomorrow. This coming week will be busy, but hopefully much more routine. I'm thinking about taking Friday off, just to rest and catch up some.

I have a couple of different blog posts rattling around in my head; we'll see when I get them written and posted.

Power Shopping!

I decided this week that this weekend would be a shopping weekend. Now, in general, I avoid clothes shopping like the plague. It's just not my idea of a fun-filled afternoon, particularly when I have a list of things I need to get. Ugh. But, for whatever reason, I seemed to be in the mood this week, and I know better than to let that sort of mood slip by. Of course, the mood could have been brought on by the fact that spring is quickly approaching here, and my hurriedly slapped-together work wardrobe is certainly only appropriate for winter. At a bare minimum I needed some good khakis that were dressy enough for work but not so dressy that I couldn't get a bit of dirt on them.

So, off I went to the mall. I got there just before 10 a.m., when most of the stores are just opening. I have to say that it was a quite successful day. In just over 2 hours, I ended up with 5 shirts/blouses, 3 camis, 2 pairs of pants, 1 pair of capris, and a dress. Happily, JCPenney had almost everything on 50% off before 1 p.m., so it was a great value! (I've been accused of only shopping when there are sales going on...sure, but when's the last time you were in a clothing store that wasn't running a sale of some sort?!?) It is also impressive that I was able to get almost everything I wanted to get so quickly. A lot of times I can spend several hours shopping and not find what I want. This was almost a miraculous shopping venture. I am also very happy that bright, saturated colors happen to be "in" this year. I found some really nice colored shirts that aren't a hideous shade.

In other news, the Wichita Garden Show is this week. www.wichitagardenshow.com We are going to be busy setting up Monday and Tuesday. Then I'll be at the show Wednesday-Sunday. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. plus tear down on Sunday. So yeah...not getting a whole lot else done next week, needless to say. I also have a short TV appearance on Tuesday and a fairly important meeting to fit in on Monday. Yikes! Then next week I have Entomology/Plant Pathology update Tuesday and Hort agent training Thurs-Fri. in Manhattan.

In other words....don't expect to see much updating for a couple weeks. Sorry, no live-blogging from the Garden show, fun as that might be. If you desperately have to talk to me, your best bet is likely to be calling my cell phone.

Ice and Snow

I would gladly give away the ice and sleet for a nice foot of snow. Ugh. I fail to understand how it can be 27 degrees and raining/sleeting rather than snowing. I'm told that it has to do with the temperature of the atmosphere, but it still seems rather ridiculous.

Anyway, I was in the office all week this week. Monday we decided that I needed to put out a newsletter as a vehicle for advertising the vegetable conference next month, so I spent most of Monday and part of Tuesday writing articles for that. It turned out really well though. Hopefully it is well received and gets a good response. I also got to meet the Extension vegetable specialist on Thursday at Master Gardener training and we talked for a little while about some ideas for programming and outreach here. I also got signed up to teach a gardening class next spring, so I started putting together the presentation for that class too.

Next week I'll be in Manhattan for 3 days: 2 days of Hort agent training, and 1 day of meeting with another mentor.

I'm trying to write some Christmas cards, but I have found that I'm severely lacking in addresses for people. So if you think you might like a Christmas card from me, you'd better email me your snail mail address.

Long Time, No Blog

Since last blogging occurred, I went to Iowa for Thanksgiving with Steven and his family, then I was at KSU for the first round of "real" training. It wasn't too bad, actually. I was a little worried, because sometimes things like that aren't as useful as people running them would like to think. Then I was back in the office on Thursday and Friday, where I helped with Master Gardener training Thursday, and did odds and ends on Friday.

It is a trifle frustrating when I meet Master Gardeners, and they say, "I don't know why you like vegetables. There are so many beautiful things to plant in my yard, I just can't grow any vegetables." ARGH. Not that I'm opposed to a nice ornamental plant. I'm sure that once I have space and time, I'll find all kinds of bizarre and interesting irises and dahlias and such to plant. Ah well, I'm sure I'll have half a dozen who really like fruit and vegetable gardening eventually.

Next week I'll be in the office all week, probably working on presentations most of the time. December is kind of a slow month, so I'm not going to be running around like crazy...too much. It should give me time to continue getting settled.

I did drive around a bit yesterday, in an ill-fated attempted to do some Christmas shopping. I just seem to have no really good ideas for anyone this year. I'll probably do better with my online shopping. I was semi-productive last week, in that I wrote half a dozen Christmas cards. Now they still need addresses and stamps, so don't hold your breath waiting for a card from me.