Why I took a break from the blog

Hi, folks.

Just a heads up: this post is going to have very, very little content related to the farm.

So, as you likely noticed, we've been fairly silent since October. This wasn't a planned absence - I came home from a knife-sharpening workshop in early November and hand-wrote a blog post with the intention of posting it - but the stars kind of aligned and kept me away from this space. I wasn't checking other blogs, either. I missed reading posts from my friends (as I count most blogs I follow to be friends, especially Buttons and Tessa) and I missed updating you all on what was happening in our life. As such, I'm making a conscious effort to reconnect with you, and make our lives available to you as well.

As you may know, both Jordan and I work full time. Jordan is extra busy right now, studying and writing tests to advance his career goals, and I am busy with work as well.  I'm a library technician at a small academic university, and I manage all of our online resources. This includes ensuring our users, both students and faculty, can access online books and journals, article indexes, and specialized resources (including 3D anatomy modelling!) that the university spends a lot of money on. I turn it on and make sure we are providing proper access points; I troubleshoot when users, or myself, can't get access to what is needed; I turn resources off at the end of our access period; I do some work with off-campus authentication so users can access the resources from work, home, or wherever their research (or vacations) take them; and I provide support to our Collections and Acquisitions librarian so she has the information she needs to make decisions regarding our e-resources. In addition, I provide 4 hours of reference a week - answering research, citation, and access questions. Right now, I'm slotted to contribute all my reference hours on chat reference with users from post-secondary institutions across BC and the Yukon (as opposed to face-to-face reference with our users).

As you can imagine, this means that I have 35 hours a week staring at a computer. I really enjoy my job, and I love my career path, for so many reasons - but all of the computer work I do to get paid means I'm not super enthusiastic to come home and spend more time with the computer.  I spent a good portion of December and January battling headaches at work, and it turned out my glasses prescription needed to be updated. But this meant that looking at the screen hurt like heck for a few weeks, and I was forcing myself to look away at least once an hour to get make it through the day.

I've also been busy with Zim. We've been at school two nights a week since August. It's been going great (more on that in an upcoming post), but as I'm struggling to avoid burnout, I will be taking a break from class for a bit. I plan to make some of the equipment (with Jordan's help) so we can keep practicing at home, but I'm also looking forward to taking a break from all extracurricular activities (except my work with the union at work - I am in a position with a two-year term, which ends next January) and try to regain my balance and sanity.

If we had the snow load that we had last year, I would have lost my mind this winter. I'm not exaggerating - last year's snow was so hard on us and it was a struggle to keep up. We also bought a small SUV for me, which has decreased my winter stress (look for a post about that soon too).

Anyway, I'm currently attending a conference related to my job: Electronic Resources and Libraries, or ER&L.  The conference is in Texas, but they offer online attendance as well, which is about 10% of the total cost to attend in person. But the conference is on Texas time, so it starts at 6:45 am local time, and we live out in the sticks without "real" internet, so I am attending from Kim's house in town. I brought Zim in with me yesterday, and he'll join me tomorrow too (as it's his last class tomorrow), but today it was just me with Doodle and Pongo. And Pongo likes to sing. So I will leave you, for today, with a quick video of my favourite shelties singing the song of their people during a break between conference sessions.

And, rest assured: I am making an effort to be present on the blog. I'll be back soon with more news from the last few months.

Off with her head! (or, Propagation by cuttings)

I've introduced you to my 'work garden' before - and today, I've got an update.

(Yes, yes, I know - I owe you a huge update.  All is well, and I'll get to it, I promise.)

Princess - remember her? the giant Parrot's Beak that I've cut back once already? - has continued to grow.  She's HUGE.  Due to my terrible hands-off management of her growth, she's gotten too big, and too lopsided, and her stem(s) finally started to give way when I tried to turn her around to sun the other side of her last week.  It was obvious that Princess needed to be cut back again, and today was the day.

The work garden

Fuscias - looking appropriately fuscia

Right row, front to back: Spider plant, Donkey's Tail (Kim's), another Spider plant.  Front center: Vancouver Centennial Geranium. Left row, front to back: Garlic (Kim's), Princess Two, Princess One (you can see her leaning on the Spider plant's pot), Aloe Vera (Kim's)

The Parrot's Beak (Impatiens niamniamensis - that's a fabulous name!) has stems that get woody as they grow, but the first few inches of new growth at the top are young and supple.  I had clusters of leaves right at the bottom of the new growth, so I cut the stems right under that cluster, then removed the clustered leaves.  The bottom two inches of these cuttings went into some nice wet potting soil mixed with a bit of compost - I'm hoping that they put out roots quickly and successfully.  (Sending out a huge thanks to a now-retired colleague, who left a bag of potting soil for me that she had brought in to repot her giant fern.  Thank you again - I'm putting it to good use!!)

New cuttings - introducing Princesses Three through Five!

There's one more new branch started on Princess One, and she's got a few flowers growing on her original stem, so I'll keep her around for a little bit longer, cut and plant that fourth branch, then likely dispatch Princess One.  I am being much more careful with the growth of the other Princesses - I pinched the new growth off the main stem of Princess Two fairly short once she was firmly rooted, and she's since grown two more branches, one of which has reached my height tolerance and got pinched today. I'll keep Three through Five short as well - Three (the tallest in the above picture, on the right) is already a good height for a main stem, but I'll wait until she's rooted before pinching the new growth.

All three are now in the sun, with bags over them - Three gets the bag that I used for both One and Two when they were first cut, and Four and Five have large freezer bags over them.  This raises the humidity, creating a little microclimate of their favourite conditions, which will reduce the stress while they take root.

Princess One and her beautiful - if slightly malformed - flowers

The spider mites that I battled for months have been successfully eradicated, and I'm now very cautious about grabbing new plants.  We have a yearly 'Green Day' here at work, and the greenhouse brings plants to share - they take pest control very seriously, so I am quite confident that their plants are clean.  In fact, that's where Princess One came from, along with Kim's Donkey's Tail - last year's Green Day.  This year, I got a geranium and Kim got garlic.  They had some herbs too, but I already have lemon balm in the perennial garden at home so I decided on another huge, flowering plant.

I have another Aloe, it is keeping a colleague's big tree-like mystery plant company in another corner.  All of the Aloes come from the one I got from Mom's Aloe a few years ago - and they're all putting out babies like mad!

Interested in learning more about Impatiens niamniamensis?
Stupid Garden Plants - This plant blog is hilarious :)
Strange Wonderful Things
Gardening Know How - information about propagating Impatiens