Plant Problems

This past weekend I finally pruned my jade plant that I got four years ago in Ann Arbor. It had grown top-heavy and sparse around the bottom. Similarly, last fall I finally pruned my geranium plant that had grown from a small cutting into a veritable tree.

My geranium, when it used to be a tree.

I am a bit of a helicopter plant-parent, and I have a problem cutting back my plants. I just get so excited to see them growing that I can't bear to chop them off! And then they grow tree-sized and unruly, and I realize that I should've pruned them months ago (or years ago, as in the case of my jade).

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for life, right? Sometimes you have to let things go in order for them to flourish... things like plants, kids, ideas... I mean, even the newest Disney princess Elsa made the case for letting go in order to realize your full potential.

My helicopter-parenting has led to other problems, too. I have now killed one cactus and one air plant since living in Boston, and a second cactus appears to be on its way out. I also have a second air plant now, but I'm terrified that it will die, too. Anyway, I suspect I'm overwatering the cacti, so I'm trying to ignore it in hopes that it pulls through. Or it could be that the winter has been too dreary, and the cactus is dying from lack of sunlight. Succulents aren't supposed to be so difficult!

On the other hand, my dracena and a different jade plant still have mealybugs. I cannot make them go away! I think I'm being neglectful in that regard, and I should probably take my helicopter tendencies to the mealybug war.

Finally, my bamboo has been looking sickly for a year, although it's not dead yet. I'm not sure if it's unhappy with the chemicals in my tap water (it generates a ton of salt crystals around its stem and the edge of the vase) and/or if it doesn't get enough light (its leaves turn yellow). Google tells me I could try replanting it in a larger pot with soil instead of leaving it in its vase with stones and water, but I just don't know.

For someone with a master's degree in natural resources, my green thumb is not that great. Things either shoot up like trees or die for no apparent reason when I try to nurture them. I'm trying to just "let it go" and relax, but I feel like I'm killing my babies here...

Hey there, 2014!

Another year gone by... another chance to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't think I made any resolutions last year so I can't provide you with any checklist of how I did, but instead I'll look at the highlights and lowlights of the year.

First, looking back at my blog posts from last January, I realized that one of the most notable improvements from 2013 is that I no longer live with mushrooms growing from my bathroom ceiling. Woohoo, it's the little things! Of course, there are still housing-related difficulties. Like, as I discovered a couple days ago when it was 4 degrees outside, my building's boiler cuts off automatically when the external air intake valve freezes. Talk about a terrible design feature. Building management had to bring in a space heater to warm the valve to keep the heat on. Any engineers out there who want to tackle that one?

Another winter lowlight (or should I say "high"light since we ended up with mountains of snow?) was winter storm Nemo. Ugh, I hate winter. But it was really fun to play in 2.5 feet of snow! 2014 is shaping up to be a snowy year, too, since it's only January 5th and we've already had three snowstorms of 6+ inches. A highlight of 2013 was in October when I finally convinced myself to pay a pretty penny for a pretty, warm, professional-looking winter coat. It comes to my knees and is super warm without making me look like a marshmallow--and it might be the only thing making winter bearable.

Beyond all, though, the worst part of 2013 was losing my sweet, almost 14-year-old puppy Maizie. I never even got to see her in 2013, since my last trip home was Thanksgiving 2012. It took me a long time to figure out how to write a tribute good enough for her. I still miss her cute smile a ton, and I laugh thinking about her zip-zip-zipping around the house.

In more bad animal-related news, my houseplants suffered a mealybug infestation in May. Although I put up a good fight, I still have two plants with mealybugs. I don't have enough window space to quarantine them all! But hopefully 2014 is the year of full recovery. I love my windowsill gardens, so I'm still fighting for them...

2013 also saw huge changes at work. I started managing projects, which proved (and continues to prove) to be a huge honor, responsibility, and challenge. Yes, I feel like 2013 threw an enormous number of management challenges my way, from inexperienced staff to tight budgets to tight deadlines to unexpected Congressional interest. I have no idea whether I'm a good manager or not, but I'm working on improving. And amidst all that management-related stress, I can use all the pats-on-the-back I can get, like creating a map for the National Climate Assessment last January.

Some of my proudest highlights of 2013 are fitness-related. I ran a 5k in 27 minutes in June, learned to paddleboard in August, and joined a gym in November. I am really hoping to keep up with these things in 2014. I think I'm a nicer person when I spend time outside and exercise away all that work-related stress. There is just something amazingly refreshing about running until you're sweaty and exhausted and have no energy to think about your mile-long to-do list. It's a great feeling. (And I'm writing this sheepishly after having skipped the Sunday morning ballet class that I wanted to go to in favor of getting a full eight hours of sleep today. Oops.)

The biggest highlight of the year was definitely my trip to Greece. I spent 10 days exploring the Greek islands with Colin, gorging myself on delicious seafood, soaking up the Mediterranean sun, and finally getting a glimpse into his lizard-catching life. I'm very happy that Colin has a couple years left in his PhD program because that means I can hopefully fit in one more trip to the islands to see him!

Actually, I might nickname 2013 "the year of the travels." In addition to Greece, I took trips to Georgia and Florida for spring and summer and Christmas vacations, Seattle for a wedding, Detroit for a bachelorette party and wedding, New Jersey for a wedding, western Massachusetts for Labor Day weekend, St. Louis for Thanksgiving, and Maine for a few visits with Colin's family (plus, of course, 10 or so weekend trips to New Haven). I love spending time with good friends and family, and I am so lucky to be able to afford to do so. I only wish that everyone I loved lived in the same place! I know that my friends' lives will be changing tremendously over the next few years with weddings and babies and grown-up financial priorities like houses, so I'm really grateful that we can take the time to travel to see each other now. Having friends and family scattered across the country is such a good problem to have!

So, 2013 wasn't perfect, but there was a whole lot of good stuffed in there with the less-than-good. If 2014 is about the same, that would be okay with me. May everyone have a happy and healthy new year!

Catching Up

Oh my gosh, I can't believe how long it's been since I've written anything here! I have all these ideas for blog posts in my head (trust me, they're good). Inevitably I have tons of energy and dream of writing witty and entertaining stories during the day, then I get home from work and am too tired to even think about typing. That makes me sad.  I really enjoy writing, but hopefully one of these days I'll have more time (or more energy in the time that I do have). In the meantime, though, here's a quick update.

I made lasagne for the first time this week. The spinach is definitely my favorite part, and this one proved to be delicious... other than the top layer of noodle and sauce that always gets crunchy and I just hate that. But other than the spinach, the best part is that it's a ready-made lunch and dinner that will last for an entire week or more!

New recipe alert! I'm expanding my repertoire to include spinach lasagne.

And then Colin showed me up in the cooking department and suggested we make spanakopita for dinner. I (being the lazy chef that I am) suggested substituting crescent rolls for filo dough since filo dough sounds super intimidating. It was a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. And it only took half an hour or so to make! Who knew fancy cooking could be so easy.

Colin taught me to make spanakopita. It was a super duper easy dinner.

They were delicious. I was only sad that the leftovers got soggy so quickly.

And here's my desk partner, Violet!

Check out my violet! She just exploded with flowers over the last couple months.

Doesn't she look beautiful?! It's the same flower that was a favor from my good friend Aaron's wedding last September (2012), and it flowered almost exactly one year after her wedding. I took that as a sign that the universe approved of her marriage, so I texted her a quick photo letting her know she was doing okay in Mother Nature's eyes. I think Violet also really likes her new window seat in my cubicle. But here's a quick question for all you green thumbs out there: is it normal for African violet leaves to turn brown and translucent? It only happens to one or two leaves at a time, and they're always the ones on the bottom, and it's been going on for months. That all makes me think that it's just the plant's way of shedding to make room for the new leaves, but I have no idea. I only water her in her saucer and don't water her very often, so I don't think it's an over-watering thing. I just know nothing about plants, and Google didn't seem to be very helpful on this one.

What else is new in my life? Well, sailing/kayaking/paddleboarding season is over (I actually have a bunch more photos of my last couple trips, but that's another post...). It's not quite wintry yet, so I've been enjoying my last few weeks of running outdoors. I've been trying to do one loop around Fresh Pond each week plus a run to the river or somewhere else on the weekends. It makes me so sad to think of how soon it will be too cold for running... so I've been considering joining a gym for a few months. A couple friends from work go, and they have a million (that's not much of an exaggeration, actually) class offerings, so it would be fun. The gym is between home and work so I would be more likely to go than if I had to make a special trip out in the bitter winter cold. I just don't know... gyms are so expensive... sometimes I miss all the perks of being a student!

Oh, and in other news, tonight was IEc's biannual trivia night. The company provides pizza and drinks and brings in a trivia leader, and the winning team gets a happy hour paid for by the company. It doesn't seem quite fair, but the team that has always won before consists of the company president and an invitation-only, select group of senior staff. (On the other hand, maybe it is fair. I certainly hope the company president is smarter than all the rest of us.) Well, guess who defeated the undefeated tonight??? That's right. Yours truly and her team of not-usually-good-at-trivia, who-else-wants-to-play-with-us junior staff. We had six associates and one RA; two Brown alums; two SNRE alums; and we were all between the ages of 21 and 29.

It was actually quite a nail-biter. We were trailing for a few rounds (although we only missed three questions the entire night), but by the last round we were within one point of the leaders (which, incidentally, was not the president's team). For the last round, there were two questions: one on U.S. history, which happens to be my worst subject ever, and one on music, which is a close second. For each question, you could wager between 2 and 10 points. The first question: which U.S. President made the most famous White House telephone call ever, to the man on the moon? Well, that was way before the lifetime of any of my team members, but luckily I know that Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon on my birthday in 1969. My teammates knew their presidential history better than me, so they listed all the presidents back in order and we counted down the years until we got to Nixon in 1969. Wager: 10 points.

But the leading team got it right, too, and we were still trailing by one point! Last chance: which musician released Brainwashed, his final album, in 2002 and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2004, and was also inducted as part of a group? We weren't entirely sure about this one, but thank goodness we paid some attention to pop culture in the 90s. George Harrison? Wager: 10, because, well, go big or go home. We were one of only two teams to get that one right, and the leading team missed it--and you know what that means!! Winners! Sweet, sweet victory of the underdogs. And best of all, our team happened to be an awesome group of people that I am thrilled to get to share a happy hour with.

So, yeah, it was a pretty cool night. :)

Thanks

Thanks to Mom's and Grandmother's and the internet's advice, my plants are doing really well. I'm optimistic that they'll make a full recovery. (Except, of course, the paper whites, amaryllis, and geranium that I threw out.)

I devoted all of last Sunday to plant care, first picking off the tiny bugs with a tissue and tweezers, then painting the leaves with rubbing alcohol to kill any bugs that I wasn't able to pick off, then spraying everything with a mixture of soap and water to disable any remaining bugs--and apparently, if you use peppermint-scented soap, like Dr. Bronner's, it acts as a pest-repellent, too. My kitchen smelled so wonderfully minty after all of this! The scent also brought back a very acute memory of washing dishes in the field in Madagascar.

After all that, I left the plants for a few hours before wiping the leaves of my dracena and spider plant with a wet paper towel. I read online that, although a little soap does not hurt plants, too much may be bad. I figured that the saddest thing of all would be to successfully kill the mealybugs and then lose my favorite plants to soap overdose.

Five days later, they are all beautiful. I've been keeping them as quarantined as possible, rotating between sunny spots and not-so-sunny spots so they don't die on me before I can squish them back into the living room. Apparently mealybugs can take a week to 10 days to hatch, so I may need to treat them again soon, but the prognosis looks good!

In other news, it was 80 degrees here today! I have had just about the most stressful week at work ever, complete with very little sleep and lots of takeout, so it was nice to have beautiful weather to perk me up. (It frosted earlier this week, so this is a welcome relief.) I have to write my mid-year self-review for work tonight. These 6-month reviews inevitably happen during the busiest week possible. Do our bosses plan it this way, just to see how we cope?? I'm tempted to write "I didn't have time to do my review because you gave me too much actual work." At least if I have to stay up late tonight evaluating everything I've done in the past six months, I can do so with the windows open and my little windowsill garden growing happily.

Infestation - need help!

I just discovered that my houseplants are in crisis. Months ago, I noticed little white fuzz on a geranium, but I had no idea what it was. It certainly didn't look like an insect. I ignored it. Then, about one month ago, it started looking terrible, so I moved it to a sunnier spot, did some internet research, and discovered: mealybugs. Thankfully nothing else seemed to be affected, so I just chopped off the greenery (it wasn't the prettiest plant ever anyway) and threw it away.

Last week, that same plant sprouted up again from its roots (I had been too busy to deal with the "empty" pot). I decided to leave it, happily thinking that now I had the chance to grow a prettier geranium.

This morning, I noticed white fuzz on that little sprout, too. I went to water the rest of my plants and noticed that my paper whites were just covered in fuzz! I angrily hacked that plant off, too, then went on to inspect everything else.

I have thirteen houseplants that rotate between my bedroom and the living room, the only two rooms that get enough natural light to keep them happy. Every single plant except my bamboo, which lives far from the window, and my cactus have mealybugs. I'm terrified I will lose them all.

I don't know what to do. There are only two plants that hold sentimental value to me--my spider plant, which I've had for at least five years and just this year finally sprouted a little baby spider, and my dracena, which was a Boston housewarming gift from Colin and my Christmas tree for the last two years. I would, of course, hate to lose my aloe and jade and cactus and bamboo, but they are easily replaceable and I haven't invested too much time in them.

So what do I do? I'm throwing out the paper whites and amaryllis and the new geranium sprout because  I don't want to take any chances with plants that don't matter much. I don't know whether to just throw out the aloe and my two jade plants and my other unnamed succulent, or try to save them (how?). They aren't heavily infested, but I don't know. But what to do about the spider plant and dracena?? They only appear to have a few mealybugs apiece, but I know they will spread. Plus, the dracena is so bushy that I can't possibly search every leaf. I also don't have a lot of space to quarantine plants. I don't want any plants next to each other for fear that the bugs will spread and I will end up with no houseplants. I can't bring them to my office because I get no natural light there. How do I save a plant from mealybugs?

Gardeners out there (Mom, Grandmother -- Happy Mother's Day! You always have the right answers.): please help!

A Violet's Adventures

Violet's best side. It's hard to look good after traveling that far!

This lovely African violet has gone some pretty incredible places lately. She started out in the Cleveland Science Center - no no, that's wrong, she probably started out where all little violets do, on a little nursery shelf with 100 of her siblings - and then she made her way to the Great Lakes Science Center. That's where we met. She was waiting for me.

Violet hung out with me in Cleveland for one day before making her way to the airport for her first flight. She was a trouper, traveling the whole way enclosed in a plastic bag for her safety. She even went through the ritual TSA pat-down. Violet went on to Nashville for a quick minute, then to Panama City, then to - finally! - Mexico Beach, Florida, where she could climb out of her plastic bag at last.

After a wonderful few days at the beach (Violet stayed indoors), we journeyed onward to Lake Seminole, Georgia. On the way, Violet dined at the Fish House restaurant, grocery shopped at Piggly Wiggly, and read the newspaper with Grandaddy in his Prius while the womenfolk shopped. Before her adventures were through, Violet also saw airports in Tallahassee, Chicago, and Boston. Now she's home - battered but happy, with a few glittery white flowers hanging on - on my desk in Cambridge.

Stories to follow.

Last Moments of 24!

I have but a few hours left of being 24 years old, and then I'm officially, no doubt about it, in my mid-twenties. One-quarter of a century old. Scary!

I'm excited, though! Life mostly seems to keep getting better and better the older I get, although there's definitely still room for improvement. Just think--this time last year I was packing my apartment to move to Boston, I had never considered learning to sail, and I didn't have a little windowsill garden. I did have Zingerman's, though, and I sure miss those delicious sandwiches and like-a-cucumber pickles.

My birthday also marks my almost-one year anniversary of being a working woman at IEc. That, too, has just gotten better with age. I'm now the lead analyst on multiple endangered species critical habitat analyses, I alone conducted the benefits part of the cost-benefit analysis for EPA's coal ash regulation soon making its way through OMB, one of my maps may show up in the National Climate Assessment, and I developed a model of sea level rise in Madagascar for the World Bank. (And, more on this later, but my masters project has inspired a project proposal for the United Nations Development Programme!)

Anyway, here's to 25! May it bring lots of adventure and fun, new friends, good times with old friends, new things (who knows what I'll be reflecting on this time next year), and more of the same old stuff I enjoy now, like running and sailing and reading and knitting.*

*I'm optimistic that it will because, as I write this, I've just finished packing my bags for a weekend adventure at a waterpark resort (technically my good friend's bachelorette party). In 24 hours, I'll be ringing in 25 with a mini-vacation full of my best SNRE friends, and I couldn't ask for a better way to celebrate!

Homegrown Summertime Deliciousness

 First tomato and fresh mozzarella salad of the season, and I made it with basil from my own windowsill garden! The salad was a little light on fresh basil (I supplemented with some dried) because my plant is just barely big enough to qualify as not a seedling anymore. Although I did want to prune it to grow bushier, I didn't want to totally demolish it!

The salad was delicious, though. Paired with fresh strawberries, Grandmother and Grandaddy's homegrown blueberries, and a glass of wine, it made for a lovely summer dinner.

Spring has Sprung

 This is me in my little makeshift "garden."

When I moved in, I had bamboo, jade, aloe, and a spider plant. Since then, I've added a pot of cacti (housewarming from Dad), dracena (housewarming from Colin), another jade (clipping from Colin's parents), basil (going out of business sale at a store down the street), and two little pots like the one I'm holding of alyssum and poppy seedlings ("year of seeds" from Rebecca--there are 10 more pots and plenty of leftover alyssum and poppy seeds to go). My latest addition is the daffodils from Trader Joe's.

It's just not spring without daffodils!

I can't wait until I one day have a little patch of grass to wiggle my toes in, and to grow the three things I cannot live without: basil, tomatoes, and daffodils.

As a disclaimer, I should note that since moving to Boston I have also had mint seedlings never sprout and an air plant and two cacti die. I tell myself they probably had hard lives before I brought them home, but my thumbs aren't all green.

Christmas Creativity

Since starting work as an economic analyst, my left brain is exhausted at the end of the day, and my right brain begs me to break out the crayons. The result is this series of creative endeavours over the course of the holiday season!

We start with cooking.

I love pumpkin pie and definitely did not get my fill at Thanksgiving: the disadvantage of not cooking dinner at home is that there are no leftovers! I'd never made a pumpkin pie, so I took the easy way out by buying a can of pumpkin filling. The crust and the whipped cream are totally homemade, though, and it was delicious! Happy tummy. :)

This next food - don't get too excited - wasn't made by me. It was baked by my impressively talented, impressively nonchalant boyfriend Colin. I'm including it here as a comparison with the following photo, which was baked by me. Looks like one of us still needs some practice....

This is Colin's garlic bread. He minces garlic cloves and spreads them over the dough, then rolls it up like a cinnamon roll log, for a fun garlic surprise!

This is my weirdly lumpy garlic bread.

Finally, the Christmas season wouldn't be complete without gingerbread and eggnog. I love eggnog but rarely buy any for myself because I will drink the whole thing. As it was, Colin and I drank it all between the two of us and still felt sort of sick afterwards. Our gingerbread cookies weren't particularly flavorful (we'll try a different recipe next year), and I don't have any cookie cutters, so we spent the evening drawing freehand shapes in the dough with knives. We ended up with plenty of gingerbread men and women, a reindeer, a sleigh, Christmas trees, stars, hearts, a bell, a present, candy canes, and even an alien. (Guess who suggested that one? Hint: not me!)

Gingerbread, eggnog, holiday scented candle, and ... iPhone--what's that doing in the still life?!

Now we move to my Christmas crafts, which were the result of 1) being too lazy to pick out holiday cards from the store, 2) having a drawer full of paper scraps as a result of previous arts and crafts projects, and 3) loving these adorable polar bear cards from the Environmental Defense Fund. I really like how they turned out! It'll be hard to top these next year.

Playful polar bear cub!

Sleepy polar bear family.

Cuddly polar bears.

Another cool crafty moment this holiday season was a little more high-tech. At the end of an exhibit on Monet's waterlilies paintings at the St. Louis Art Museum, several computers were set up to allow aspiring artists to create their own waterlily pictures. Together, Mom and I made a masterpiece:

Take note; you might see this in a museum one day. By the way, the touchscreen technology is so cool!

Of course, what would Christmas be without the tree? On the evening that Colin came to visit, we decided that without the "real thing," we'd have to make our own. Luckily (you may remember), Colin bought me a dracena as a housewarming present. It's tabletop tree-sized, and it has plenty of branches. As I mentioned before, I also have plenty of paper scraps. See below for the results:

Mom's Christmas tree. Totally normal. 

Claire and Colin's Christmas tree. 'A' for effort, but not normal.

So that's what I've been up to, and how I've been fending off left-brain burnout for the last couple months. Next on my agenda: finish knitting a hat, and cook something in my crock pot.

But because this is such a picture-heavy post already, I might as well add some more. Here is an assortment of other people's creative endeavours, sights around Boston, and my disappointing attempt to bring some greenery into my life.

I guess dogs are allowed on the T (the subway) because this cutie pie sat across from me, quietly napping in his winter coat. I surreptitiously snapped this picture to document one of the strangest passengers I've ever seen riding the T.

Apologies for the blurry photo, but this was too crazy not to document! Just as Mom and I walked out of the Art Museum, we happened across a group screaming, "Are you ready to ROLL?!" And all of them proceeded to barrel-roll down Art Hill (some faster than others, some never made it, and some rolled over others before getting there). It was an attempt to set a world record. Helicopters were flying over, presumably filming the feat.

On an uncharacteristically warm day in December, Colin and I drove his aunt's car to Middlesex Fells, just outside of Boston, for a short hike. This photo was taken from an observation tower, looking northeast-ish.

Another photo from the Middlesex Fells. I love being outside; Boston is not a very green (in the tree-cover sense) city at all. Is it weird that when I arrived in Georgia for Christmas, I kept thinking as we drove home from the airport through pine forests, "I got trees for Christmas! Trees and stars! Yay!"

Speaking of loving trees, I killed my air plant. How do you kill an air plant?? Now I have a strange and depressing dish of stones in my cubicle. Sometimes, for lack of anything better to display in it, I place my blue-and-purple koosh ball on top. (Sorry, no photo of that.)